Brenda Novak - White Heat

God, she was pretty. At times she took his breath away.

“What?” She glanced over as if she could feel his scrutiny and didn’t like it.

“Nothing.” He turned his attention to the rocks, soil and cacti flying past his window. During moments like these, he was so tempted to act on the attraction between them it was all he could do to keep his hands to himself. He wouldn’t have bothered to fight the impulse if she was half as resilient as she pretended to be. But her desire to love him showed in those wide blue eyes every time she looked up at him. He couldn’t take advantage of her vulnerability; he wouldn’t break her heart. He, of all people, knew what could happen if he did.

“We haven’t talked about Portal,” she said.

He adjusted his seat belt. “There’s not a lot to say about Portal. It’s a very small town.”

“How small?”

“Maybe fifty people, mostly ranchers, artists, bird-watchers and nature enthusiasts. Paradise used to be even smaller than Portal, until the Covenanters moved in.”

“Why aren’t we starting off in a bigger place?”

“The closest town with any significant population is Willcox. They have about thirty-five hundred people, but it’s an hour and a half from Paradise. I felt that was too far and we’d have trouble making contact with the cult.”

She fought the wind whipping at her hair by anchoring several loose strands behind her ears. “But how can a cement contractor expect to earn a living amid fifty ranchers, artists and bird-watchers? I doubt they’re the type to pay for a lot of concrete work.”

“I’m actually playing an out-of-work contractor. With the downturn in the economy, I’ve decided to go after my real aspirations—photographing wildlife. I’ll be taking pictures for a coffee-table book I hope to sell.”

Her eyebrows slid up. “Did you bring a camera?”

“Of course.”

“Nice thinking. Except that doesn’t explain to others where we get the money to eat and pay rent.”

“We’ve recently inherited a small sum from your grandfather.”

“That wasn’t in the dossier, either,” she pointed out.

“I just made it up before we left. We have this inheritance and we’re using it to spend a year in Portal to take photographs for my book, hoping to recoup expenses when we sign a big deal.”

“Okay, so you’re an aspiring photographer. What am I going to say I do?”

“You’ll be my assistant.” That would keep her at his side all the time. It was perfect. But she didn’t seem convinced.

“Don’t you think this might seem kind of random?”

“No one says we have to be the most responsible couple in the world. Reckless can be believable, too.”

She bit her lip as if contemplating what he’d said, but his explanation must’ve pacified her because she changed the subject. “How much farther do we have to go?”

He checked his Swiss Army watch. “Another four and a half hours. But we’ll hit Phoenix soon. We’ll stop there to buy your wardrobe and other supplies.”

“Are we planning to get the air conditioner fixed in Phoenix, as well?”

“We don’t have time if we want to reach Portal before dark, which is advisable considering there’ll be no city lights. I’ll fix the air-conditioning myself once we take up residence.”

“If Portal is an hour and a half from Willcox, which is the closest population center to Paradise, how far is Tucson?”

“About three hours.”

“This is sounding very remote.”

“There’s no mall.”

“Forget the mall. I’ll settle for running water.”

“We’ll have an outhouse.”

She wiped the sweat from her upper lip. “Great. Snakes and an outhouse. My two favorite things.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be there to look after you.” Confident that it would provoke her feminist tendencies, he gave her a satisfied smile and she didn’t disappoint.

“I can look after myself,” she snapped.

“Aren’t you at all concerned that we’ll be so far from help, should we need it? I mean, say one of us did get bitten by a rattler. Tourniquets aren’t an attractive option if you plan on using that leg again.”

“I’m not worried.”

He could tell it was a lie. The fact that they’d be so out of touch bothered him, too. But he wouldn’t let her get hurt—by a rattler or anything else.

Pulling the bodice of her dress away from her body, she fanned herself, even though she must have known it was a futile gesture. “I’m anxious to see what these little towns are like. Especially Paradise.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t look them up on the ’Net.”

“Last night? I had too much to do to get ready.”

He covered a yawn. “Like trying to talk me out of taking you.”

“Actually, I was trying to talk you out of coming along,” she admitted.

“You wanted to do this alone.”

“That’s how I prefer to work.”

“Milt would never have gone for that.”

“Milt’s totally indifferent to what’s best for us. He didn’t even give us a chance to prepare.”

“He knew we’d have a long drive, plenty of time to flesh out the details.”

She narrowed her eyes. “How long have you known about this?”

“A couple of days.”

“That’s long enough to do some research.”

“And I did a little. What do you want to know?”

“How about what I would’ve found if I’d done my own?”

“Portal sits at one end of a large canyon, with the Chiricahua Mountains to the west and New Mexico to the east. Paradise is an old mining town, five miles up the mountains.”

“Mountains? You mean, real mountains—in the desert?”

“Real enough. The highest peak is almost ten thousand feet.”

She nodded. “I’d say that’s a real mountain.”

After driving in silence for several miles, she glanced over at him again. “It won’t be easy keeping our stories straight. The longer we live in Portal or Paradise or wherever we wind up until this job is done, the more we’ll get to know other people, and the more we’ll talk and share anecdotes. We’ll seem strange, reclusive, if we don’t make friends. That’ll make folks uncomfortable and less likely to trust us. Yet the more we open up, the greater our risk of exposure.”

“We’ll manage.”

“But we won’t even be sleeping together. How do we fake intimacy that’s not there?”

She was putting him on notice, drawing the line at her bedroom door. But he had some ammunition he could use, too. “It’s not as if we haven’t made love in the past, Rachel.”

Her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. That was the first time he’d ever referred to the night he’d found her waiting in his bed. He generally chose not to embarrass her, but what had happened sat so awkwardly between them. If they were going to play husband and wife for the next few weeks, they needed to address the issue and get it out of the way. Then maybe they could both relax.

“That was a long time ago,” she said, but he wasn’t about to let her off the hook that easily.

“Not that long ago. I know your body, and you know mine. We’ll go by memory.”

Her chin jerked up. “I don’t know your body. I—I can’t remember a thing. I was drunk or…or I never would’ve been so bold.”

She hadn’t been drunk at all. As a matter of fact, he’d only ever seen her drink one glass of wine, even at company parties, where most employees drank much more. “You’re saying that wasn’t the real you.”

Unwilling to meet his eyes, she kept her head at a jaunty angle. “Not at all. You know what it’s like. Sometimes you have too much to drink. You get a wild idea like ‘hey, why don’t I surprise my boss?’ and you act on it. Then you wake up feeling like an idiot, wondering what on earth possessed you to do something so stupid and normally unappealing.” She glanced over to see if he was buying her act, so he pretended to believe her.