Can't Take the Heat (10 page)

“Before today, I wasn’t sure I wanted to remember. I thought if I didn’t belong with you, if you weren’t home, then I didn’t belong anywhere. But that house…” She sighed. “It feels like a home.
My
home. In a way this apartment never has.”

It had never felt like home to him, either. When he and Delaney first moved in, the apartment had simply been convenient. Her mother had never owned a home of her own, so when she passed, Delaney had been forced to move out. The logical thing for her to do then was to pack up her mother’s things, put them in storage, and move in with him. And before they decided to get married, buying a house—or even renting one together—hadn’t seemed to make a whole lot of sense. Besides, the money they saved by living rent-free let Wes sock away a ton of cash they could one day use for a down payment. Then they’d gotten engaged…and broken up a mere two months later.

So, here he still was. But it wasn’t home. It was just where he happened to sleep and shower and keep his clothes.

“And I was thinking,” she went on, tracing a line from his bared collarbone to his navel, “that maybe tonight, I could take you home to my place.”

“Are you asking me to sleep over?”

She waggled her eyebrows at him. “Who said anything about sleeping?

We’re in my house. In my bed. Where my heart tells me we belong, even though the facts on the ground say otherwise.

The queen bed is smaller than the king in the apartment, which means Wes’s feet hang off the end if he stretches out all the way. So far, though, he hasn’t been stretched out much. I don’t intend to give him much of an opportunity, either.

Something about being here has slowed things down, made our lovemaking seem less frantic, more indulgent. When I went down on him, he didn’t stop me from making him climax; he simply returned the favor and, by the time he was finished, he was hard and ready to go again. He made love to me through not one, but two orgasms before finally letting himself come.

It’s been about half an hour since then, and we’re spooned together, my back to his front, his arm draped over my waist. To my astonishment, he’s getting hard again. “You’re insatiable,” I tease.

“You’re irresistible.” The rumble in his voice raises goose bumps on my skin and brings a rush of heat and dampness between my legs.

Apparently, I’m insatiable, too. I lift my head and give the alarm clock the hairy eyeball. He asked me to set it for five a.m., just in case we fall asleep. It’s not quite half past two.

“Do you really have to go to the office so early?”

His hand slides down to brush the curls at the apex of my thighs. My inner muscles tighten in anticipation. “Unfortunately, yes. I’ve got a seven o’clock meeting with the housekeeping staff. Standing thing. Once a month. Can’t miss it.” He nuzzles the back of my neck, his fingers finding the slit between my legs and brushing tantalizingly close to my clit. “And I can’t go in smelling like sex.”

I spread my legs to give him better access. “I’m sure they’re used to things smelling like sex,” I point out, a little breathless already.

“Not their boss, they’re not.”

Remembering how his technique has improved with regard to anal entry, a pinch of jealousy winds in my chest. He learned that “bear down” thing somewhere, and it sure as hell wasn’t from me. “I doubt you’ve been a monk since we broke up.” I don’t like the note of censure in my tone, but I can’t keep it out.

His hand goes still. “You haven’t been a nun, either, but I’m not going to hold that against you. I don’t think you should hold it against me, either.”

He’s right, of course. I don’t have any right to expect fidelity under the circumstances. Still, even though I
know
we haven’t been together for nearly three years, in my heart, we just got engaged a week ago. I can’t prevent myself from reacting to the knowledge that he’s been with other women the way I would have reacted if he’d done it back then. It’s not rational and it’s not fair, but I can’t make my emotions match a reality I haven’t experienced.

I roll onto my back so I can look at him. We kept the curtains open because the bedside lamps are too bright, so I can only make out the side of his face that’s illuminated by the moonlight. His mouth is tight at the corners and his nostrils flare. He may not be holding other lovers I’ve had against me, but he’s not any happier about the idea than I am. This shouldn’t please me, but unreasonably, it does.

“Did you ever see a movie called
Flight of the Navigator
?” I ask.

He ponders for a second then shakes his head. “I don’t think so. What’s it about?”

“A kid who gets abducted by an alien ship and returned to earth eight years later. Because of the whole speed of light thing, he hasn’t aged but everyone else has. His parents don’t live in the same house anymore. His younger brother is now his older brother. Everything is foreign and confusing to him.”

Wes’s expression softens. “That’s how you feel.”

I take a deep breath. “All the time.”

After a brief silence, he says, “So how does it turn out? The movie, I mean.”

“The alien does some kind of time warp thing so he’s returned a few seconds after he was taken instead of being gone for eight years.” I sigh. “I wish I could do that.”

He levers himself up on his elbow. “I wish we could both do that. But I don’t know if anything would have turned out differently.”

The heat has gone out of the moment, replaced by a tenderness that makes my chest feel as though a stone is pressing on it. I want to make our time together last as long as possible. Just as much, I want to understand what it is that stands between us, how we came to be two people who love each other but can’t be together.

“If I don’t remember by Friday, Jessica recommended that I see a psychologist who specializes in hypnotherapy.”

That’s three days from now. Three days and three and a half nights. Unless, of course, everything suddenly comes flooding back to me before then.

“You should do whatever it takes to get well. I want that for you.” He brushes his lips against my temple. “But is it wrong for me to hope you don’t remember before then?”

I shake my head. “I hope I don’t, either.”

But what I really hope is that I remember and realize whatever happened doesn’t matter.

Chapter Four
Wednesday

Wes’s early meeting with the housekeeping staff turned into a meeting with the union representatives, which then turned into an even longer meeting with the HR director. Since I can only watch so much TV—even on a huge, crystal clear screen—I called Chelsea to see if she could have lunch with me. I hate imposing on people, but there’s only so much sitting on my ass I can do before I go stark, raving mad. I long to go back to work.

Except, of course, I can’t until I remember what the hell I actually do for a living.

Chelsea met me at the upscale Spanish tapas place inside the Barrows casino she manages. The last time I was here must be more than six years ago. In those days, Barrows South had a Moroccan theme dating back to when Sam purchased the place about twenty years earlier, and the decor was beginning to show its age. Even so, thanks to a combination of proximity to the airport and clean, comfortable rooms at reasonable rates, the South had been turning a tidy profit for more than two decades. It was also the only property Sam had ever hung onto for more than five years outside of the Grand. After all, his stock in trade was buy low, rehab cheap, and sell high. I’d never put much energy into wondering why, of all the properties he’d bought and sold in thirty years, this was the one he’d kept, but as soon as I walked into the place, I thought maybe he’d had a plan all along.

From what Wes has told me, Sam handed the South over to Chelsea about two and a half years ago, right after she graduated from the hospitality management program at UNLV. And she has kicked proverbial ass.

I couldn’t help remembering as I made my way through the casino to the restaurant that Chelsea spent a year between high school and college on a grand tour of Europe, and that the place she spent the most time and loved the best was the south of Spain—Seville, Granada, Cordoba.

That love is in evidence everywhere in her redesign of the Barrows South. Gone is the kitschy Moroccan feel, replaced by a Moorish-Spanish theme that’s an elegant and authentic homage to its inspirations. The once dark interior is now painted in bright, sunny colors: whites, yellows, oranges with accents in red and blue. Keyhole arches with elaborately carved abstract decorations separate the slot machines from the gaming tables and the gaming tables from the restaurants. The central courtyard with its large swimming pool and lush garden, once hidden from view, is now visible from almost anywhere inside the casino through new floor-to-ceiling windows. If you like to gamble in the dark, Barrows South is probably not for you. For everyone else, though, it’s a breath of fresh air—albeit a climate-controlled one.

The tapas place is located inside an enclosed porch overlooking the pool. On a pleasant afternoon like this one—I’d guess the temperature is in the mid eighties—the windows are open to let in the breeze. The food is excellent but inexpensive, another plus for the South’s customers, although Chelsea wouldn’t think of letting me pay my bill. There is, apparently, such a thing as a free lunch if you’re dining with the general manager.

“I can’t get over how gorgeous the place looks,” I say, sipping my iced tea as I admire my surroundings.

She shrugs, although I can tell the compliment pleases her. “It had good bones. Just needed a little TLC.”

“It’s still impressive. Especially since you’re all of…what, twenty-four?”

Chelsea doesn’t
look
twenty-four. Or more accurately, she may look twenty-four, but she carries herself like a self-assured, successful woman in her mid-thirties. Dressed in a short-sleeved, formfitting black pantsuit, she’s every inch the powerful executive and she knows it.

“Still twenty-three, actually,” she corrects me. “My birthday’s not until November.”

“God, that’s right.” I feel like Rip Van Winkle. Okay, I didn’t sleep for twenty years, but my memory assures me that I went to sleep in mid-May and woke up almost three years later in August. I still can’t quite get my head around
when
it is. “Either way, it looks like you’re doing a great job with the place. Your father must be really proud.”

She lets out a little harrumph of amusement. “Oh, you know how my father is. His way of showing that he’s happy is to bitch and moan about the expense of the remodel, about how much I’m paying my staff, about how high my food costs are, and so on. You’d think the company was on the brink of financial disaster instead of raking up money like it really does grow on trees. And honestly, most of that is thanks to Wes.” Spinning her glass of diet soda in the ring of condensation that’s formed on the surface of the table, she takes a deep breath and says, “I don’t think you knew, even before you lost your memory, what a wreck my brother was after the two of you broke up. I never blamed you for what happened, which is why I never told you how bad things were for a while there. But if you do that to him again…” She levels her gaze at me, the shape and color of her eyes so similar to Wes’s, my breath gets stuck somewhere between my nose and my lungs. “I have to be honest, Del. This time, I’ll take sides. And you’re my friend, but he’s my brother.”