Turn Up the Heat (21 page)

Her head lifted from his shoulder, blond curls brushing the space between their bodies. Goddamn it, he knew he shouldn't have opened his mouth, or his heart, or whatever it was that had made him ask her to stay. He knew he couldn't be with her in the long run, but the way she made him feel every time she looked into his eyes or said his name had pushed the stupid, reckless words right out of him.

“You want me to stay here with you,” she said, like she was making sure she'd heard him correctly. Shane could feel her stare, honest and unfeigned, and he met it even though it scared the hell out of him.

“Do you want to?” He couldn't quite bring himself to say that yes, he wanted her to stay more than he wanted to fucking breathe, but Bellamy seemed to get the idea just fine without words, which was one of the reasons he wanted her to stay so badly to begin with.

She got it. Despite how different they were, she got
him
. And even though Shane couldn't have her in the long run, he wanted her for every second until she had to go back where she belonged.

“I do want to. As long as
you
want me to.” Bellamy paused to give him one last glance in the shadows, searching for an answer.

Shane nodded, pulling her close. He didn't want to waste a single second of the time he had with her worrying about the fact that, eventually, he had to let her go. For the next couple of days and nights, he had her.

And he was going to make the best of it before she went back to her life, in the only place he couldn't follow her.

Bellamy rolled over and slid her arms beneath her pillow, cradling it under her cheek as she inhaled the fresh cedar scent she was fast becoming addicted to. She didn't open her eyes, just breathed in deep and memorized the feel of the flannel sheets, soft against her body, and the comfortable quiet of the cabin.

She'd told him she would stay.

In the grander scheme of things, staying with Shane made sense. It wasn't exactly a secret that she liked him, and the feeling seemed pretty darned mutual, especially after last night. They had some time before she had to leave to go back to the city, and he wanted to spend it with her. It wasn't as if they were getting married or anything, for Pete's sake. It was four days. Ninety-six hours. Nothing major.

Then why did she feel it would make or break her?

“Hey, you awake?”

Bellamy fluttered her lids open just in time to catch Shane putting a steaming mug on the bedside table. He leaned in, his hand brushing her curls, but didn't sit down on the bed.

“Coffee's fresh.”

Her insides tightened. Shane was already dressed in his trademark jeans and thermal top, lean muscles of his forearms showing just enough from the pushed-up sleeves to make Bellamy's pulse hopscotch through her veins.

“Mmm, thanks.” She sat up, rubbing her eyes for a full ten seconds before she realized she was naked as the day she was born. Modesty made her scoop the covers to her chest, trying to hold them in place with her palms. Shane's eyes flared darkly from where he stood next to the bed, but then he looked down, probably to give her at least a little dignity as she tried to figure out where her unmentionables had gotten to. Bellamy patted awkwardly through the bed with one hand, using the other to try to cover her nakedness.

Oh, screw it. It wasn't like Shane hadn't seen her sans apparel. He was the one who'd taken the damned things off in the first place. She twisted her hair up in a knot and launched a full-on rummage for her bra while he examined the floorboards. Her cheeks burned as she found it tucked in the folds by her feet and put it on, following quickly with her shirt. Looking around for her clothes like this should feel awkward, right? Things could be so different by the light of day, after all, and . . .

Was that bacon?

“I have to go to work in a little while, but I made breakfast if you're hungry. It's nothing fancy,” Shane added. His eyes were back on her, and they'd lost none of the intensity of the moment before. “But I kind of figure you can't go wrong with bacon and eggs.”

Bellamy's stomach rumbled, letting her know it was more than interested. “That sounds really good.”

He nodded. “Okay. I'll just let you get dressed then.”

She waited until Shane had his back turned before sliding out of bed to scoop her pants and panties off the floor, grimacing slightly at the thought of putting the torturous G-string back on. Measuring her options, she decided to forgo undergarments in favor of good old-fashioned commando. After all, she was only headed back to the resort.

Or was she? Her heart played a healthy game of pinball in her rib cage as she remembered Shane's request. Maybe he hadn't been serious when he'd asked her to check out of the resort and stay with him for the rest of the week. Worse yet, maybe he'd said it in the heat of passion and was now totally regretting having asked her. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the universe, right? I mean, sure, it would be a blow to her healing ego, but still. The sex they'd had would've made her babble like a topographical map full of brooks . . . if she'd been able to speak at the time. So he'd let it slip in the thick of things. People said all kinds of crazy things in bed.

“Bellamy?” Shane's dark gaze rested on her face. He'd stopped in the door frame, eyes crinkling in what looked like concern.

She pasted on a too-bright smile and scrambled for her wits. “Sorry, I'm slow to wake up sometimes. You were saying?” She brushed an errant curl from her face and tucked it behind her ear, fully dressed except for the tiny slip of lace and string surreptitiously balled up in her fist. Shane's eyes swept over her hand, and his jaw ticked under tight muscles. Good Lord, this was embarrassing.

“I just said to help yourself to whatever you need in the bathroom.” He gestured to the narrow door right outside the bedroom, but didn't move otherwise.

Bellamy's bare feet whispered over the floorboards as she rushed to escape. “Right. I won't be long, and then we can head out.”

“Stop.”

Okay, the Jedi mind trick thing was
so
unfair. Her feet defied the
go
message from her brain, bringing her body to an abrupt halt at the foot of the bed. Bellamy steeled herself as she peeked up at him.

“This is about what I said last night, isn't it.” There wasn't even a hint of a question in his voice, and his black-coffee eyes were on her, steady and unnervingly hot.

Here we go.
“Look, it's really no big deal for me to stay at the resort. If you think I should. If you want me to, I mean.” Ugh! She really needed to work on quality control with her common sense. What the hell was
wrong
with her?

Shane lifted a sable brow. “Truth?”

No.
“Of course.” Bellamy fought back the waver in the words.

“I want you to stay.”

Her lips parted in surprise. “You do?”

He nodded, stepping in. Oh, the smell of his skin so close to hers was just plain cheating!

“Look, I'm not going to lie to you, but I don't think you'd want me to.” Shane paused to let a wry little smirk lift one corner of his mouth. “We have four days before I'll be done with your transmission. I don't know what'll happen after that, but I do know that, until then, I don't want you to go.”

His honesty startled her. “I don't want to go,” she admitted, the words spilling out of her.

“So stay. Stay the four days with me, and we'll figure the rest out when your car is done.” Shane's eyes sparkled under the sooty frame of his lashes. He dipped his head to place a kiss on her neck, the softness of his lips canceled out by the brush of stubble on his chin. “Just . . . don't go.”

Not speaking your mind had never made sense to Bellamy. But what if the thing you needed to say scared the hell out of you? Then what?

Guess she'd just have to be scared, that's what. Bellamy steadied her hands and slipped them under Shane's chin, lifting it to look him straight in the eye.

“Okay. I won't go.”

 

 

“Okeydokey . . . darks over here, whites over . . . here.” Bellamy rooted through the suitcase she'd propped open on top of an oversized wash basin. “And slutty underwear over here,” she snickered, reaching into her purse for the scrap of lace and string that she might consider wearing again, just for the look it brought to Shane's face.

She'd been eternally grateful to find a small Laundromat in the basement of the resort, and although she had a sneaking suspicion it was reserved for staff, her need for clean undergarments outweighed the fear of getting busted using their facilities. Even in spite of the fact that she was checking out in a matter of hours.

To stay with a guy she'd known for all of five days, but felt like she'd known for six lifetimes.

Time to focus on the laundry.

Bellamy filled two of the four washing machines in the tiny basement room, feeding them with the requisite amount of quarters and laundry detergent she'd gotten at the resort's drugstore. Once her clothes were doing the swishy-samba with the water and bubbles, she plunked herself into the only chair in the cramped space.

“No time like the present,” she said quietly, and popped open her laptop. Before her conscience or common sense could stop her, she pecked
culinary school, Philadelphia
into the search engine and hit Enter.

“Two hundred forty-six
thousand
hits? Are you kidding me?” Her breath left her lungs in a burst of no-freaking-way as she scanned the list.

Well, at least she had options.

Forty-five minutes and two spin cycles later, she'd scribbled a page and a half's worth of meticulous notes on a legal pad. Culling through the list was proving easier than she'd thought, and yielded a couple of very viable options.

Sure. Provided she had the balls to follow through on applying.

A loud crash just outside the open door frame brought her to full attention. Bellamy scrambled into the narrow service hallway, where she found a well-muscled, platinum-blond brick wall of a man, wearing chef's whites and cursing up a blue streak at the plates and serving tray littering the floor.

“Are you okay?” she asked, bending down to help collect the dishes. “Wow, it looks like you got lucky. I don't think any of them broke.” Bellamy glanced at the scattering of kitchenware on the thin layer of carpet lining the hallway.

The stormy hazel glare she got in return for her trouble made her regret opening her mouth. The guy flipped the tray over and filled it with startling efficiency, looking more at her than at the clean dishes he was stacking.

“Am I okay? Well, let's see. I've been waiting for a produce shipment for over twenty-four hours, my boss, bless her dark little heart, expects the impossible from me, and don't even get me
started
on the sorry excuse for wanna-be line cooks cowering in the kitchen. Apparently, it's too much to expect that even one of them might be able to break down a chicken without destroying the damned thing. Even the easy stuff is out of the question. Hell, at this point, I doubt that half of them can even wash dishes with much success.”

By the time his tirade was halfway to rant status, he'd righted the tray under his massive hands and stood up to rake his cold, hard gaze over her. “I don't suppose you're any good at washing dishes and have a couple hours to kill, hmm? It would make you the bright spot of my shit morning.”

Bellamy narrowed her eyes at him. She didn't care that she didn't know this guy from Adam. No way was she going to let some hard-edged kitchen jockey bully her around.

“Of course I can wash dishes,” she shot back, thinking for only a split second before putting a hand on her hip and matching him tone for tone. “But I'm better at breaking down a chicken.”

Brick Wall's dark eyebrows kicked up in the direction of his bottle-platinum hair, and Bellamy noticed that one of them had a stainless steel barbell pierced through it. Shit. She just had to get mouthy with a guy who looked like he belonged in a motorcycle gang, didn't she?

“
You
can de-bone a chicken without rendering it useless?” Brick Wall's expression clearly suggested he thought she was full of crap. He frowned for added emphasis.

Bellamy stood as tall as possible without rising onto her tiptoes even though her heart had taken up permanent residence in her throat. “Yup.”

He gave her a long up-and-down look as if she
was
a chicken, and her muscles grabbed tight around her bones.

Bad idea! Getting flip with the big man was a bad idea!
She took a quiet half step backward. Maybe she could get back to her laundry and her Google search unscathed if she just shut her mouth and went now. Never mind that she really
could
break down a chicken, and make twenty different things with it, to boot.

“Well what're you waiting for, Sunshine? Believe me when I tell you I don't have all day.” He jerked his head down the hallway marked
STAFF ONLY,
and Bellamy creased her brow in response.

“But I'm not . . . I don't work here,” Bellamy stammered, willing her bravado back to the mother ship. She fastened him with an uneasy look. She couldn't just go marching around in the resort's kitchen, could she?

Brick Wall cracked an evil smile. “Technically, I don't either. Not yet, anyway. Look, I'm weeded up to my armpits, so really. If you wanna put your mayo where your mouth is, now's the time. Otherwise, I'm a ghost.”

Bellamy squeezed her eyes shut on the fastest prayer she could muster and slung her laptop bag over her shoulder, running to catch up. She did her best to block out the chorus of
what the hell are you doing
? coming from the back of her mind.

“I'm Bellamy Blake,” she said, following the guy's brisk strides to the end of the dingy back hallway.

“Adrian Holt,” Brick Wall replied with a nod, bumping the door in front of them open with an elbow before barging through like he owned the place.

Bellamy's heart skittered in her chest as the name sank in and did the recognition dance in her brain. “As in, Carly di Matisse's sous chef, Adrian Holt?”

His evil grin reappeared. “One and the same, Sunshine. Now go grab some whites from the back room and let's see what you're made of, shall we?”