Taking the Heat (18 page)

He hadn't actively dreamed about becoming a librarian, but when he'd been in his IT program at college and heard about the library science master's program, the name had triggered memories of those long days of exploring the giant library. Library science... It almost sounded like a form of archeology, and wasn't that what Indiana Jones had practiced?

He'd been intrigued enough to check it out. And he'd liked it enough to take a class. And then he'd loved it. And hell, a degree in library science might not be the perfect tool for running a chain of restaurants, but he'd already had all those skills. He'd been free to get whatever degree he wanted.

It had been a perfect fit. His first love hadn't betrayed him. He loved words and books and being around people. Hell, he even liked the organization of it all.

“That
Dog in the Night-Time
book's pretty good,” Benton said. “Maybe I will come by the library sometime and try something else.”

“Sure,” Gabe said. “I'll do some research. See what else I can find for you.”

“Thanks.”

Everyone was quiet the rest of the way. It was nearly forty-five minutes to the site, and it felt so long for Gabe that he couldn't imagine what it was like for the people trapped on the rocks below.

The SUV finally pulled into a rocky clearing that sat between pine trees and a steep drop-off. As soon as the vehicle stopped, they all jumped out. Captain Davis had been in the truck in front of them, and he was ready.

“We've got two casualties. One man with an ankle that's likely broken and another with a crushed hand. The female rafter is uninjured. None of the injuries are life threatening, but the paramedics are concerned about shock, so let's not waste any time. Gabe, you head down with the four experienced rescuers.” He tipped his head toward William and Benton, who were already conferring at the edge of the cliff. Gabe could hear water below.

“Follow their lead,” Jake said. “The rest of us will stay up here and provide muscle and backup.”

Gabe got a harness and a helmet on, then waited as one of the team strapped rescue gear to his back. Lines were being anchored and strung. Everybody was ready within ten minutes.

Gabe watched William go down first, then Benton, and then he hooked into the line and headed down toward the small group of people huddled on the boulders below.

His heart was beating almost as hard as it had for Veronica the night before. Almost, but not quite.

* * *

V
ERONICA
 
HAD
 
KNOWN
 
that her long-awaited sexual afterglow couldn't last forever, but she hadn't expected it to end quite so abruptly. First Gabe had texted to say he wouldn't be able to see her tonight. He'd been called up to help with a white-water canyon rescue, which was really hot, but not as hot as a night with him would have been.

She'd felt guilty for her immediate flash of disappointment. After all, saving people from dying was more important than giving her another orgasm, but...water rescues weren't even his area of expertise, and her sex life had been a long-term natural disaster for so many years.

She'd nearly slapped her own hand at that. What a selfish thought. She'd decided right then and there to make an anonymous donation to the rescue squad to make up for her awfulness. She wasn't a terrible person; she was just monstrously horny all of a sudden.

Finally experiencing good sex had changed her brain-wave patterns, it seemed. Everything made her think of it. Stretching under her sheets this morning, she'd noticed how smooth and soft her body was. When she'd gone to the bathroom, she'd smiled in secret delight at being tender from sex. Making her breakfast, she'd imagined making it for Gabe and then joining him back in the bedroom. Hell, even sitting at her laptop made her want to look up dirty ideas or at least type a few more sex-positive messages to herself. And then there was the bed right behind her, practically pulsing with memories of getting well and truly fucked.

“Aw, man,” she breathed, squeezing her thighs together.

It had been really hard not to drop any hints in response to Lauren's texts.
You have a lot of explaining to do!
Lauren had written that morning.

Lauren's second text had confirmed Veronica's suspicions on the subject.
About Gabe!

Veronica had laughed in delight and sent a smiley face back to her friend. Lauren's next text had made Veronica clap a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter.

The firefighters are gossiping. I heard about it from Jake. ARE YOU DOING GABE? You'd better call me later.

“I don't kiss and tell,” Veronica had said aloud as she'd typed the same to Lauren, but God, she wanted to. She stared at the rumpled sheets of her bed and thought of all the things she wished she could tell
someone
.

Veronica paged through her emails, looking for a cheerful Dear Veronica letter to answer. She didn't want to deal with questions about body odor or infidelity today. She wanted something
happy
.

Or maybe something obnoxiously fun. Something about yet another man who hated going down. Man, she could really go to town about that now.

Two more Dear Veronica emails arrived, and she immediately rejected the first one. It was a rant about American women and how they didn't seem to appreciate “real men” anymore. Not an uncommon complaint, and one that always made her shudder.

But it was the second letter that stopped her cold. As soon as she saw it, she realized she'd been waiting. Dreading. Knowing it had to come someday. Her body hummed with a terrible prickling anxiety, a combination of alarm and self-loathing and fear. The email was titled “I Don't Know How to Keep Going” and just that made Veronica break out in a sweat that chilled her whole body.

Dear Veronica,

I feel totally alone. Nobody in my school likes me and when I try to talk to my parents about it, they tell me to try harder to fit in. But you can't TRY your way to fitting in, especially when nobody wants you around.

I don't fit in and I never have. I don't care about sports or hunting or video games, so I don't know how to talk to other guys. I get sick just thinking of going to school, and most days I don't want to live anymore. I don't think I can get through two more weeks of this, much less two more years, and I don't think anything will change after high school anyway. Do you have any advice?

—Nobody

Nobody. The screen went blurry and Veronica had to wipe her eyes several times before she could see the words again.

Nobody. She knew exactly how that felt. To be nothing. No one. It had been her life in high school, too. It had been her life in her own family.

Do you have any advice?

Oh, God. She wasn't qualified for this. She was barely qualified to give advice on wedding etiquette and blow jobs. But this? This kid needed real help from a professional.

She took a deep breath. That was exactly what she'd tell him. As a matter of fact, she could still remember the language used for these kinds of letters at her previous job.

Feeling a tiny bit calmer, she read the letter again, but this time she took note of the email address and her heart fell. It appeared to be a randomly generated series of numbers and letters, and the email provider was one of the largest online sites. A lot of people used a temporary email address to submit questions. It usually wasn't a problem, because the disclaimer on the paper's website covered permissions, so she didn't have to follow up before publishing.

But this was different. She needed to reach out to this boy.

She immediately hit Reply and crossed her mental fingers as she started typing, but she hit a snag immediately. She wasn't going to call him Nobody. She refused to. So she just started with “Hello” and went from there.

I'm hoping you're still at this email address so we can talk. Could you let me know? I'd love to get some more information about what you're going through, because I truly understand. Please get in touch.

She signed her name and hit Send. When her inbox dinged just a few seconds later, she knew what it meant. Her response had been returned as undeliverable.

Veronica wiped her face again, then blew her nose and closed her eyes to try to stop her tears. If she couldn't reach him directly, she'd have to post a response on her online column, because she couldn't wait a week to answer this boy. What if things got worse for him? What if he decided to hurt himself? She knew what the suicide statistics were for teenage boys, and this boy was clearly depressed.

She needed to reach out and she needed to do it the right way. She ticked through her mental list of contacts, but she couldn't settle on one that satisfied her. There was a psychiatrist she'd been in touch with through the paper once, but she didn't trust him. He'd seemed arrogant and had even cracked a few jokes about his patients. No, she didn't trust him at all.

Her social circle wasn't very large, and it didn't include any doctors or therapists, but she knew whose would. Ironic that she might have to get in touch with him about this. Her lip curled at the thought. But this wasn't about her, and she could swallow her pride for this child.

She dialed her father and held her breath.

“Yes?” he answered curtly. He was all business with her and anyone else beneath him. If she'd been a US senator or one of the wealthy people in town, his tone would have been decidedly warmer.

“I need to ask a favor,” she said, hating the words as they left her mouth.

“I hope the favor has to do with Dillon Tettering.”

“It does not.”

“So it's money?” he barked.

“No, it's not money. Listen, I just need to know if you have any friends in therapy or psychiatry in town. I have a bit of an emergency regarding a letter writer, and I need a little advice.”

“Isn't that what you're paid for?” he said with a cold laugh.

“Dad. Just... Do you know anyone? Surely you've dealt with a lot of psychology experts from the bench.” It always helped to remind him that you were aware of his very important job.

“Most of those are brought in by the feds.”

“But not all?” she pressed.

“Sure,” he finally said. She could hear him shuffling papers as he spoke to her. His attention was always on something else, but maybe he was actually looking for something for her this time. “I can give you a name.”

She sighed and slumped into her chair. “Thank you.”

“I assume you'll return the favor by having a drink with Dillon Tettering.”

Unbelievable. It wasn't enough that she was his daughter; she still had to bring something to the table. Her tension over the letter snapped to anger. “You know I don't like him. You know I didn't like any of Jason's friends. Why would you ask me to do that?”

“Jesus, Veronica, that was years ago. Grow up. It's a drink.”

“Yeah? What if he wants a quick lay afterward? You want me to do that, too?”

She expected him to explode. She actually winced, waiting for it, but after a brief moment of silence, he laughed, one deep, hard bark of laughter. “Get over yourself and meet him for a drink. It's a development deal, not a sex-slave ring. And I don't know what the hell you're so uptight about, anyway. You have no trouble embarrassing me with half the columns you write.” He hung up without waiting for her agreement. A few minutes later, her mail dinged again, and she opened it to find an email from her father. It was just the name of a psychologist and a phone number, nothing else.

She called the psychologist's office immediately and left a message with the receptionist, blatantly dropping her father's name in the hopes that the therapist would call back quickly.

As soon as she got off the phone, she sent an email to her editor, asking if it would be all right to update the online column early this week. Then she started on the first draft of her letter.

Her father's name, as bitter as it was on her tongue, was a magic word in this town, and her phone rang just as she finished reviewing her words. Not only was he fast, but the therapist agreed to review Veronica's letter as soon as she sent it, to make sure she was offering the correct advice.

As she waited for his response, she read the letter from Nobody again, trying to puzzle out details that weren't there. If he was writing to her, he probably went to her old high school here in town, and she could perfectly imagine him wandering those halls, hoping he didn't run into anyone who'd draw attention to him.

Veronica's stepbrother had been one year ahead of her, so the only class they'd ever shared was Spanish. But that hadn't mattered. He'd been a year older. He'd corrupted everything for her, his disdain trickling down through the lower classes.

She'd hated every single day. She'd hated waking up in the morning and knowing she'd have to see him, share a house with him and then go to a school where he'd made her into a nobody.

Even now it was strange to think that her arrogant, superior stepbrother had been willing to tear her down so completely when she was related to him. She'd have thought he wouldn't want that association. But the truth was that he couldn't bear even one atom of approval or admiration being focused on anyone else, and she'd committed the biggest sin of all: she'd lived in his house, and she'd been there before him. Destroying her had been about claiming his territory, like the male lion who killed all the cubs in a pride when he took it over.

He hadn't wanted his mom to remarry, he hadn't wanted to leave Southern California and he definitely hadn't wanted to live in Wyoming. Stepping on Veronica had been his revenge, and he'd enjoyed it.

Veronica sat back and stared at the ceiling, drawing deep breaths.

Returning to Jackson hadn't brought back as many memories of her high school years as she'd feared. Jason and his mother had hightailed it out of here years ago, her dad had a new house, and most of the people she'd gone to high school with hadn't been destined to stay in Wyoming.