Can't Take the Heat (9 page)

Yes, I can easily imagine myself falling in love with this house, even if I can’t conceive how I can possibly afford it.

“You remember something?” Jett asks hopefully when she sees the smile on my face.

“Not a damn thing,” I admit. “But I do like the house. At least what I can see of it.”

“Me, too. And you got it for a great price.”

“So, how are we going to get inside?”

She winks at me. “C’mon, you don’t really think you don’t have a hide-a-key, do you? Or that your bestie doesn’t know where you keep it?”

I follow her up the walkway and onto the porch, where she bends down and digs in a potted plant until she comes out with a key. Sliding it into the deadbolt, she unlocks the door and swings it open.

As I walk inside, the first emotion that hits me is disappointment. I recognize everything, but remember nothing.

All right, that isn’t strictly true. I know, for example, that I’ve never seen the dark cinnamon-colored sofa and matching chairs before, but they are exactly what I would expect myself to choose when furnishing my living room. The color is vibrant without being overpowering and the style—high-backed, rounded arms—looks comfortable and inviting. Which is more than I can say for the industrial strength seating in the apartment back at the casino.

But I also see plenty of other pieces that I know and love, because I grew up with them. After my mother died and we—I say “we” because Wes held my hand every step of the way through those dark months—had to move out of the house she’d rented for the past seventeen years, I put the high quality items in storage. We couldn’t use them in the apartment, but I figured we’d get our own place sooner or later.

There are the solid mahogany coffee table and matching end tables that originally belonged to my grandmother. The fireplace mantel is adorned with the collection of antique candlesticks Mom built over the years. Her favorite, which is eighteen inches tall and made of delicate intertwined wrought iron, sits in the center. She brought it back from the trip we took to Spain after her double mastectomy and first round of chemo. I blink to clear my eyes as the bittersweet memory of that vacation assaults me.

The room with the floor-to-ceiling window turns out to be the dining room. I must have purchased the table and chairs, but the Shaker hutch and sideboard are from our old house, and the painting that hangs above the sideboard—a seaside scene with fishing boats pulled up along the shore at sunset—is the one that hung above the same piece of furniture at home.

Home.
That’s what this place feels like. Why can’t I remember how it came to be that way?

Jett’s hand touches my shoulder. “You okay?”

Swallowing my careening emotions, I nod. “Just lots of memories here, but none of the ones I’m looking for.”

“Damn.” She gives my upper arm a sympathetic squeeze. “You want to keep going?”

I stiffen my spine, beating back my disappointment with curiosity. Although I doubt seeing the rest of the house is going to bring about a sudden, dramatic breakthrough, I’m intrigued by my own decorating choices. It’s a bit like having a window into my own brain in the future, even though that future is actually in the past.

“Definitely.”

Once in the kitchen, I discover the real reason I bought this house. The fixtures are outdated and the maple cabinets are badly in need of refinishing, but the countertops are soapstone. Undoubtedly as original as the careworn cabinetry, they’re nonetheless in perfect condition, and I run my finger over the smooth, gray-green finish with a sigh of pleasure.

We go on to the three bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms. Like the kitchen, the bathrooms need work, but the problems are mostly cosmetic—unfashionable tile, hot and cold faucets instead of a mixer handle for the tub, and so on. It seems I had enough money to buy the place, but not enough to do all the upgrades before I moved in.

In the bedrooms, I find a few more items I recognize, but most of the furniture is, if not new, then new to me. I can tell that the room with the queen-sized bed is where I sleep, while the one with the double bed is a guest room.

The third bedroom is a surprise, though. Smaller than the other two, it’s stacked with boxes, all labeled in my handwriting or Wes’s: China, Glassware, Tax Records, Sheets and Towels, Books, Pictures and Home Movies. All the contents of the storage unit that aren’t in use elsewhere are still in these boxes. I haven’t had time to go through them yet. Or maybe I haven’t had the will, because actually deciding which things to keep and which to get rid of is the final step in letting my mother go. A step I apparently haven’t been able to take.

But maybe it’s one I need to take. Part of what I have to do if I’m going to find my way back to the present.

I turn to look at Jett, who’s standing a few feet behind me. “I think I need to go through these boxes.”

“Let me help you,” she offers. No hesitation, no questions as to why I’ve decided to unpack these boxes today, after all this time. If I need help, she’s ready to dive in. But then, that’s why she’s been my best friend since we were six years old.

I shake my head. “No, that’s okay. This is something I need to do myself.”

She purses her lips. “You sure? It’s no problem.”

“I’m sure. And don’t worry. I can find my way back to the casino from here. I know this neighborhood like the back of our hands.”

That makes her laugh. “Okay, then. But you call if you need anything. I can be here in thirty.”

“Thanks, Jett. You’re the best.”

We hug, and then I walk her to the front door. Before she leaves, she says, “I hope you find what you’re looking for in there.”

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I murmur, “I do, too.”

When the front door opened and Delaney walked in, Wes had to steel himself not to jump up from the chair in which he was sitting, pretending to read the
Wall Street Journal
. She’d called and left a message with Kari to tell him she wouldn’t be back until dinnertime, but that was apparently all she’d said. She hadn’t said where she was or why she expected to return so late, and his imagination hadn’t been doing him any favors when it came to dreaming up possible explanations. If her memory was back, he wanted to prolong the moment of not knowing as long as he possibly could. Only when he heard the door click shut did he lower the paper to look at her.

His heart lurched, as though someone had reached into his chest to grab the vital muscle and it was trying to evade capture. Even during the four years they’d been together, he’d never gotten to the point where he took her beauty for granted. It always came as a kind of shock to his system to realize she was even more gorgeous than he remembered, whether the last time he’d seen her was three hours ago or three years ago. Or just this morning.

He noticed right away that she’d pulled back her hair into a makeshift ponytail. Instead of using a proper hair band, she’d twisted it around itself to get it up off her neck. Her gauzy, off-white top was streaked with dirt. Whatever she’d been doing all afternoon, it had clearly involved physical labor and a lot of dust.

It had also made her cry. Although she’d done her best to hide the evidence of tears, he knew her too well not to recognize the slight puffiness under her eyes and the glassy sheen of her irises. He could think of only one reason for her to have been crying.

Shit, shit, shit.
He wasn’t ready to let her go again. Not yet.

“Hey, babe,” he managed to croak, then waited for the axe to fall.

To his overwhelming relief, she walked over to his chair and, rather dramatically, collapsed onto his lap. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she rested her head against his shoulder. “Hey, Crush. Sorry to keep you waiting so long.”

She wasn’t going to leave him. Not yet.

He let go of the newspaper, the pages fluttering apart as it fell to the floor. Returning her embrace, he buried his nose in her hair and breathed in the caramel and cinnamon scent of her, along with a healthy dose of what smelled like old books seasoned with a hint of mildew.

“Where on earth have you been?” The question popped out involuntarily. He’d intended to let her volunteer the information, but his curiosity proved too powerful to resist.

“I met Jett at Fusilacci’s for lunch, and afterward she took me to my house.”

Wes heard the note of pride in her voice when she said the words
my house
. He knew, of course, that she’d bought a house in one of the old neighborhoods near where she grew up. Chelsea had been there several times in the six months since Delaney had moved in.

She had every right to be proud. Here he was, still living in an apartment provided by his father’s largesse, while she had managed to scrape together a down payment and qualify for a mortgage on her firefighter’s salary. Granted, she probably made twice as much as a firefighter than she had as an EMT, but it was still quite an accomplishment in such a short period of time.

But what did it mean that she’d been there today? And for so long?

“I see,” he said, because her silence seemed to demand a response of some kind.

She undid the top two buttons of his shirt and slid her hand across his collarbone. “It was Dr. Jessica’s idea. She thought seeing my own place might jar my memory loose.”

Wes swallowed. He didn’t want to know, but he had to ask. “Did it?”

Frowning, she shook her head. “Not a one. Or at least, not anything I don’t already remember.”

Wes couldn’t decide whether this was a victory or a defeat. On the surface, it would appear to be the former, because it meant at least one more night with her. Looking deeper, however, if she’d remembered everything and still loved him, that would be so much better.

Threading his fingers through her silky ponytail, he said, “You stayed there all day, though.”

“Mmm, yeah. All of Mom’s things were still in boxes in the spare bedroom. The stuff we packed up and put in the storage unit.” Her voice wobbled a little as she spoke. At least now he knew what had inspired her tears. “I realized that if I’m ever going to get back into the present, I probably have to deal with the past.”

He nodded, because he could see the logic in her thinking. She and her mother had been very close. Vivian Monroe’s death had been harder on her daughter than it might have been on someone with a larger extended family, but Delaney had literally had no one else. Except him. That had left Wes to pick up the pieces, both literally and figuratively, and knowing how deep the loss was, he’d been content to let Delaney pack up those memories and put them away to deal with in the future. He hadn’t realized that future wouldn’t include him.

Delaney undid two more of his shirt buttons and slid his collar off one shoulder. “I remembered how good you were with Mom when she was sick. I don’t think I ever properly thanked you for that.”

“No thanks necessary. I loved your mom.” He dropped a kiss on the top of Delaney’s head. “And I would have loved her even if I hadn’t liked her, because she made you.”

She turned her face up to his, her eyes glassy with emotion. “I love you, Wes. Whatever it was that came between us, I don’t see how it could have made me stop loving you.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think it did. I know I never stopped loving you.”

“Then why—?” She broke off, knowing he couldn’t answer her question. “I just don’t understand how we can love each other so much and not be together. It doesn’t make sense.”

No, it didn’t. Not even to him, and he knew the why.

If he were a bigger man, if he were a braver man, maybe he would be able to live with the uncertainty and the ever-present danger that came with her job. He wanted to be the kind of man who could do that, and had they gotten back together under different circumstances, he thought he might have been able to do it. Because he wouldn’t have known from experience what the terror of that late-night phone call felt like, what the helplessness of knowing his beloved was hurt and there wasn’t a blessed thing he could do about it felt like.

Now he knew. And he was more terrified than ever.

“What are we going to do, Crush?” she asked softly. “I really
like
my house. You know it has soapstone counters.”

His lips twitched despite his misery. “Chelsea’s mentioned it.”