Carla Neggers - White Hot

It had to be the brown truck from last night. Tabak’s truck.

A dark-haired man in sunglasses peered across the seat and out the passenger window, his features not quite distinguishable from where Mollie stood. Unfortunately. No way could he miss her in her sweaty running clothes. Her heart beat wildly. She was breathing hard from her run, but she wasn’t so low on blood sugar that she’d be hallucinating. No, it was eight o’clock in the morning, and Jeremiah Tabak was on her doorstep. There was no getting around it.

“Well, well, well. Mollie Lavender.” It was his lazy, easy, rural Florida drawl, laid on thick and twangy. She hadn’t forgotten it. She hadn’t forgotten how it could melt her spine. He grinned at her. “Ain’t you a sight for these poor, sore, old eyes.”

“Excuse me? May I help you?”

She squinted at him, as if he were a tourist stopping to ask directions to the Breakers. Her profession often required her to think on her feet and be coherent under pressure. If he thought she didn’t recognize him, maybe he’d just go on his way.

But, of course, this was Jeremiah Tabak she was dealing with. He climbed out from behind the wheel and studied her over the roof of his truck. Sexy, confident, absolutely convinced she knew who he was. He adjusted his sunglasses, his amusement easy to read even from where she was standing. “Hi, there, darlin’. It’s been a while.”

Mollie blinked in the bright sun. She’d shoved her own sunglasses up on her head a mile into her run, after they’d slipped down her sweaty nose. She tried to look as if she hadn’t thought about him in ten years and couldn’t figure out who he was. It might not be an effective strategy, but it was the only one she had. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

He laughed. No hesitation, no doubt, no guilt. His natural cockiness had to help him do the kind of work he did, sorting through muck and crime and corruption and making people see the tragic complexity of it all, confront the unsettling, contradictory, complicated emotions that clarity brought. He was a good reporter, even if he’d stepped over the ethical line with her.

Not that it mattered. Right now, she’d have given her soul to the devil for something to hurl through his windshield.

He patted his truck roof with the palm of one hand, and she had the uncomfortable feeling he was reading her thoughts. He kept on with the exaggerated drawl. “Sweet Mollie, you’re not going to pretend you don’t remember me, now, are you?”

Remember him. As if she could forget. Even now, with him yards away, with his touch a decade past, she could feel his mouth on hers, his palms opened on her breasts.

She banked back her emotions, continuing to squint dumbly. Maybe he’d take her reaction to him as a hint and clear out. “Really, I’m sorry, I-”

“Ten years ago. Spring break. Miami Beach. Your parting words: ‘I hope you rot in hell, Tabak.’ Well, I expect you got your wish, sweetheart.” A half beat’s hesitation, a slight lessening of the good ol’ boy act. “If you read the Trib, you know I spend a lot of time in hell.”

Beneath his easy grin, she could see he was only half teasing. He wasn’t unaffected by his work. Even ten years ago, objectivity hadn’t come easily, a vulnerability Mollie had later tried to dismiss as a put-on for her benefit, another bit of manipulation so Jeremiah Tabak could get his first big story.

Naturally, he took advantage of her moment’s puzzlement. “Mind if I come in?”

That snapped her back to reality. She gave up the act. “Look, Jeremiah, we haven’t had any contact in ten years. Let’s just leave it that way, okay?”

“But I want to hire you.”

She stared at him. “You want to what?”

He walked around the truck, nothing in the way he moved indicating he’d changed one whit. “Hire you. I’ve decided I need a publicist.”

“You?”

“Sure. I’ve become something of a star reporter these days. I’m inundated with requests for my presence at various functions, speaking engagements, interviews, appearances. It’s pretty irritating.”

“I would think it would be flattering,” Mollie said stiffly.

“That’s why you’re a publicist and I’m not. I need someone to run interference for me. What do you say?”

“I say you’re not serious.”

He eyed her, within touching distance now. He was still trim and well-muscled, a flat six feet tall. Mollie tried to ignore the flutter in the pit of her stomach. He wore his near-black hair shorter, but he had the same blade of a nose, the same thin, hard mouth and dangerous sexiness. She didn’t need him to take off his sunglasses for her to see his eyes. They, too, would be unchanged, the same mix of grays, greens, and golds that had intrigued and fascinated her right from the start.

She inhaled. “Tabak…”

“Ten minutes to make my case,” he said.

“You have no case.”

He tilted his head back, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Don’t trust me, Mollie?”

“With good reason.”

“Ah. Then you haven’t forgotten me.”

She sighed. “All right, I’ll give you ten minutes, but only because you’ll hound me until I hear you out. And I don’t want anyone to see us out here arguing.”

“No?”

He seemed amused. Mollie could feel her tank top clinging to her in the warm sun. “No one knows about our little week together, Jeremiah. No one. I want to keep it that way.”

He wasn’t chastened. Not Jeremiah. Their affair hadn’t even been a blip on the horizon for him. He had gone on to become one of Miami ’s most respected, hardest-hitting reporters, just as he’d planned.

“That’s good, Mollie.” He grinned that slow, lazy, mind-bogglingly sexy grin. “I like being your deep, dark secret.”

Mollie raced through her shower while her unwanted guest made himself at home in her kitchen. She quickly pulled on khaki shorts and a white shirt, unconcerned about her professional image because she and Jeremiah weren’t going to have a professional relationship. Or any relationship. She was going to hear him out and get rid of him.

She slipped on sandals and pulled her damp hair back in a clip before sucking in a breath and venturing down the hall. Jeremiah had installed himself on a stool at the breakfast bar and had a pot of coffee brewing. Mollie gave him a brief nod and fetched down two mugs from the honey-colored cabinets.

“Nice place,” he said. He wore a close-fitting, dusk-colored shirt, chinos, canvas shoes. Casual, not inexpensive. Deliberate. He was, Mollie remembered with a hot jolt, a very deliberate man. “I suppose it comes in handy having a world-renowned opera singer for a godfather.”

“I’m house-sitting for Leonardo.”

“Of course.”

She bit her lip, wondering why she’d felt the need to justify her acceptance of her godfather’s generosity. She was just on edge, she decided, and bound to snap at everything. She filled the two mugs. Jeremiah, she remembered for no reason whatever, took his coffee black. She shoved the mug across the bar to him.

“Is he the reason you moved to south Florida?”

“Jeremiah-”

“I’m just curious,” he said.

She sighed. He was naturally curious, and he would pounce if he believed she had anything to hide. Which she didn’t. “I was looking for a change, and Leonardo’s on tour this year. He offered me use of his house, I accepted, and here I am.”

“Why your own business?”

She shrugged, sipping her coffee, trying not to look at his eyes long enough to see if the mix of colors was still so apparent. “I like being my own boss, doing everything from soup to nuts. It’s challenging, and it’s fun. I don’t think I’ll stay in Palm Beach after the year’s up, but I like south Florida.”