Tori Carrington - Reckless

Unending cold showers would be more his choice of wording.

He looked her over. She really didn’t have a clue, did she? Despite the other night at the bar when he was afraid he’d revealed more than he’d ever intended to, she thought he didn’t like her.

Which should have suited him just fine.

But suddenly it didn’t.

“I’ve really got to go…”

She turned to walk away. And without realizing he was going to do it, he grasped her wrist to prevent her from leaving.

“We really need to talk, Heidi.”

HEAT, sure and swift, swept over Heidi’s skin from the casual contact. A heat she didn’t want to acknowledge. There was only one thing worse than the possibility of being attracted to her boyfriend’s best friend: knowing that he didn’t return the sentiment. In fact, she was convinced that not only was Kyle not interested in her sexually, he wasn’t interested in befriending her either, no matter how hard Jesse tried to push them together.

“I don’t know what we could possibly have to talk about,” she told him now.

Liar. She could start by telling him how something had changed in her feelings toward him the other night. Something elemental. Something confusing. Something frightening.

Nina had told her that plans often didn’t turn out exactly the way you wanted them to. That wasn’t Heidi’s experience. At least not in recent years. And she didn’t even want to consider that her well-laid plans would go anywhere but where they should. She’d been raised in an environment where simple things like cooking dinner and regularly paying the electric bill hadn’t been planned, so she’d taken it upon herself to impose order on her own life. As soon as she was old enough, she’d gotten herself up and to the bus stop on time, changing from an often-tardy student to one with no late slips. She’d gone grocery shopping with her mother, and while Alice Joblowski had lingered in the book section leafing through the latest titles, Heidi had consulted a list she’d made of ingredients for meals for the next two weeks, because you never knew when her mother would think to go to the supermarket next.

She liked order in her life.

And her reaction to Kyle’s skin against hers now was nothing if not disordered.

She slipped her wrist out of his grip.

“Look,” he said, shoving his hand back into his pocket, seeming as irritated as she was. “I know you and I…well, we haven’t really gotten on well since I moved here. But Jesse would like to change that. And, frankly, so would I.”

Heidi frowned. “I’m okay with the way things are.”

He looked at her closely. Perhaps a little too closely.

“What is it that you want to talk about, Kyle?” She made a point of checking her watch again. At this rate, she’d be late returning from break. And she hadn’t finished one of the three errands she’d wanted to run.

“I want you to help me plan a surprise birthday party for Jesse.”

“A SURPRISE birthday party?” Nina repeated sometime later, after Heidi had returned to work.

The two women were in the café’s kitchen, Nina sitting on the prep table snacking on oyster crackers while Heidi put all her energy into kneading a fresh batch of sweet dough.

Usually, this was one of her favorite times of day. When the morning baking and the lunch rush were over and she could enjoy the afterglow of a job well done and kvetch or gossip with Nina while she tried out a new recipe.

Sometimes it was difficult to remember that Nina Leonard was her boss. Nina certainly never put on any airs, and she always treated Heidi like a coworker rather than an employee. Ideas were exchanged, schedules switched. And there wasn’t a thing Heidi couldn’t tell Nina.

Her cheeks felt as if they were on fire…along with her pants. What was the saying? Liar, liar, pants on fire?

There was one thing she wouldn’t dare tell Nina. And that was anything having to do with her recent sexual awareness of Kyle. To do so would be the ultimate in reckless, and even worse, it would be taking that awareness beyond a real fear to a very real reality.

“So what did you tell him?” Nina popped another cracker into her mouth.

Heidi slowed her kneading. “What was I supposed to tell him?”

“That you had to check your schedule?”

She pinched off a bit of dough and threw it at Nina. “I told him yes, of course.”

Kyle had offered a convincing case. Said he wasn’t used to organizing parties but wanted to do this one thing for his best friend to make a dent in the debt he owed Jesse for helping him out on so many occasions.

“What do you know about this guy?” Nina asked.

Heidi shrugged. “That he and Jesse met at college. That they roomed together for two years. He’s an architect and works a lot in cooperation with Jesse’s family’s company…”

“What about personally?”

“Like how?”

“Like does he have a girlfriend?”

“Not that I can tell. Jesse and I haven’t really discussed it.”

Nina pushed off the counter and threw away the dough stuck to her shirt. “I’d be careful there.”

Heidi’s kneading came to a full stop. “How do you mean?”

“I don’t know. You could say that I’ve had a little experience being…friends with two hot men.”

Heidi remembered the rumors and was tempted to ask about them. But the telephone rang, like some sort of physical warning that she should just leave well enough alone. She was mildly surprised that Nina didn’t seem to hear it. Someone must have picked it up out front.

“Anyway,” Nina said, checking the progress of another bowl of dough that was rising on top of thewarm stove. “I just think it’s important for you to be careful.”

“I’m not following you.”

“You know, you might not want to be…alone with Kyle during any of the planning meetings…stuff like that.”

Heidi laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Jesse and I have been a couple for eight years.”

“Just the same…”

Janice, the front-counter girl, opened the door a crack. “Heidi, it’s for you.”

Her throat suddenly went dry. Nina’s gaze sharpened on her.

“I’ll finish up,” her friend said. “You go talk to whoever it is.”

Heidi wiped the dough from her fingers and then quickly washed her hands before picking up the phone in the corner.

“Heidi?”

Her shoulders instantly relaxed and she made a point of saying directly to Nina, who was still watching her, “Hi, Mom.”

Then she turned away, not about to admit that she, too, had been half afraid that the call was from Kyle.

She groaned inwardly. However was she going to plan a party with the man if she couldn’t deal with the thought of talking to him on the phone?

She didn’t know. But she knew that, for Jesse’s sake, she was going to have to find a way.

HEIDI COULDN’T IMAGINE what her mother wanted her for. It wasn’t like Alice to be cagey. But all she’d said on the phone was that she needed to see Heidi and could she please come over to the house when she had the chance?

Heidi put the last of the dough in the fridge and then leaned against the kitchen island and sighed. It was after nine and it had been a long day. But since she wanted tomorrow off for a catering job, she’d needed to put in the hours. She was lucky that Nina and Kevin allowed her to work around her class schedule and whatever else came up. Definitely different from any other employer she’d worked for. And if she wanted to use the kitchen after hours to prepare for any catering gigs that she’d put together, that was all right, too.

Of course, her long day had left her no time to stop by her mother’s. Which was just as well, because after the day she’d had, she wasn’t sure she was up for any surprises. At least not any more surprises. She had her hands full trying to figure out what she was going to do about Kyle. More specifically, she had to get a handle on her sudden, runaway attraction to him.