Never Too Hot (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #3)(39)
Author: Bella Andre

They’d go get coffee sometimes and talk for hours, or comb through used-book stores for old books people hadwritten about sailing, but they’d always end up back at his tiny bedroom, lying together on his small bed. He’dstrip her down to her bra and panties and tell her how much he loved her. How he couldn’t wait for her to turneighteen so that he could take the promise ring he’d given her, the one she kept buried in her sock drawer, and putit on her finger. How much he wanted to make love to her, to do more than just kiss and stroke her. Sometimes whenthings got too close, when she wanted to go there with him more than she wanted to breathe, they’d barely pullapart in time. They’d sit on opposite sides of his bed, looking at the nautical maps pinned to his wall and plantheir trip around the world until they’d caught their breath.

For all the rules she was breaking every time she snuck out to him, Isabel had heard of several girls in herhigh school who’d had abortions, and had never wanted to be in that horrible position.

But lately when she pulled away, she’d seen something in Andrew’s eyes, a waning of patience. She couldn’t blamehim, not when they were the same eyes that stared at her in the mirror when she got home from his house.

Aching.

Wanting.

A thousand times, she’d imagined what it would feel like. The long, hard slide of him inside her. Filling herwith his heat. With everything he was.

It made her hot all over just thinking about it. Soon, she decided.

Before both of them went crazy.

But she didn’t want to be rushed, to have to hurry back into her clothes afterward to get home. She longed tofall asleep in his arms, to spend an entire night with him, to wake up with him in the morning and see the sunlightplay across his face. So when her parents told her they’d been invited to play an out-of-town concert, and did shewant to come, she made up an excuse about too much homework, needing to get ready for her exams.

She couldn’t wait to tell Andrew her plans, to share the delicious anticipation with him. They hadn’t planned tosee each other that night, but after telling her parents she was going out to meet a girlfriend, she headed for hisapartment.

She had to knock hard a couple of times to be heard over the loud music. She’d always thought his roommates werea little strange, but she spent so little time with them it really didn’t matter.

James opened the door, his eyes bloodshot, his breath smelling like cheap wine. “Hey baby,” he said to her,striking her, as he always did, as slightly lecherous. “Bring any of your hot schoolgirl friends with you?”

“No,” she said curtly, looking around the room for Andrew. But he wasn’t there. Heading through a haze of smoke,past a couple making out on the ratty couch, another against the kitchen counter, she went into the dark hall.

Andrew’s door was closed and she smiled at the thought of finding him in there, hunched over his industrialengineering books while the party raged a hallway away. He’d told her it was the closest thing to getting a degreein boat building and when she’d flipped through his books and saw all the strange equations and graphs, she’d beenso impressed.

She didn’t knock. Why would she, when she’d spent so many hours in his bedroom? Her heartbeat kicked up again atthe thought of what she was about to tell him as she turned the knob and opened the door. She already knew what hisreaction would be, that he’d pull her into his arms and kiss her until she was breathless.

But as the door cracked open, instead of finding him at his desk, concentrating on homework, she saw two figuresmoving together in the semidarkness. The sheet had fallen off and there was so much naked skin, more than she’dever seen. They were facing backward on the bed, as if they’d been in too much of a rush to figure out which waywas up.

Her first thought was that it couldn’t be him. But it was — oh God, how could he? — and all she could thinkaround the despair, the betrayal that was rapidly taking over every cell in her body, was that it was supposed tobe her beneath him, not some beautiful girl with long dark hair and deeply tanned skin writhing on the bed, callingout his name.

But ultimately it was the expression on his face that she knew she’d never get out of her head. The intensepleasure of release, of all those pent-up years of sexual frustration finally being relieved.

With another girl.

Josh found her there, propped up against the front door, feeling just as nauseous now as she had so many years ago.

“Mom, what are you doing?”

She blinked hard, had to work like hell to push away the vision of Andrew making love to someone else.

“Nothing,” she finally managed. “Just getting ready to head off to work.”

He looked at her like she was crazy. “Whatever.”

Watching him head into the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal, she thought again how much she hated how strained things had been between them since that afternoon at the diner when he’d blown her off.

Forcing a smile, she asked, “Got any fun plans for today?”

He shrugged. “Nope. Just hanging out.”

Of course he didn’t want to talk to her. He never did anymore. She bit her tongue, knowing better by now than to try to force it. It only made him clam up more.

Her son was growing up. And there was nothing she could do about it. Besides, hadn’t she wished her parents would get with the program when she was his age? What went around, she had often discovered over the years as a parent, had a disturbing tendency to come around. The solution was easy. She needed to chill out. Back off a bit.

Still, she couldn’t leave without going over and giving him a kiss on his head, even if he pulled away mid smooch.

Grabbing her keys off the counter, she headed into town to open up the diner, working overtime, the entire way, to push memories of Andrew out of her head.

And to convince herself that it wasn’t going to hurt like hell to see him again.

* * *

Andrew MacKenzie had planned never to come back to Poplar Cove. And yet he’d just flown into the Albany International airport, picked up a rental car and wound through the same back-country roads he’d driven so many times with his parents when he was a boy.

As a kid, he’d practically held his breath until their log cabin came into view, hurtling out of the car as soon as they parked. Now, just like then, his heart was pounding when he made the turn off the two-lane highway, but for entirely different reasons.

He wasn’t a kid with his whole life ahead of him anymore. Instead, he was a man heading toward fifty with a bullet. And all he had to show for it was a failed marriage, forced retirement from the law firm he’d given a hundred twenty hours a week to, and a couple of kids he barely knew.

That was the worst part. Not knowing his sons, having to hear from strangers how heroic they were, that they were two in a million, the best of the best.