Black Heat (5 page)

"It's Saturday, sweetie," Gayle said. "Brisket's Tuesday."

"Oh. Okay. Whatever you've got on special today. I'm sure it's fine."

Gayle winked at him before turning to Roan. "Usual for you?"

"Yes, please, and coffee."

"Coffee," Cal echoed, though Gayle gave no sign of having heard him.

Once she was gone, Roan went silent again.

"Well, at least they're friendly here. The locals haven't exactly warmed up to us," Cal tried.

"People have mixed feelings about the boom," Roan said, shrugging. "With all the people living here, it's put a real strain on the infrastructure. They're used to getting a parking spot downtown whenever they want one. We haven't had crowding in the schools...well, ever. And there are other problems. Trash on the streets, roads breaking down from all the truck traffic, a lot more crime."

"A lot more money, too," Cal said. "Way I hear it, a lot of folks are able to pay their bills, send their kids to college, save for retirement, who couldn't do it in the past."

Roan shrugged. "Life's all about trade-offs," she said, her voice several degrees colder.

Gayle came back with a coffee pot. She filled Cal's cup first, then leaned over the table as she filled Roan's.

"Don't look up," she muttered quietly. "But I thought you'd want to know. Your stepmonster just got here. Dragging the flavor of the week behind her."

CHAPTER FIVE

Roan felt her blood go cold in her veins.

Mimi. Of course. It wasn't enough that a perfect stranger had forced her into a lunch where the whole town would be watching—or that the same man was triggering feelings in her that she wanted to keep firmly buried. But now she was going to have to deal with her father's widow and the latest of the men that Mimi had hooked up with, dressed in whatever tacky outfit she'd bought with the money Roan's father left her.

"Thanks, Gayle," she muttered miserably. She took a deep breath and fixed a smile on her face. "Please, Cal," she added when the waitress walked away. "Just don't say anything to encourage her. I'll make it up to you."

"Rooo-annie!" A shrill voice cut through the lunchtime conversation as a woman came toward them, her long red coat brushing against diners as she pushed through the crowded tables. She was tall, maybe five foot ten—though high heeled boots added inches—and dramatic looking, especially for Conway, where fashion generally took a back seat to practical considerations. Short silvery gelled hair capped a colorfully made up face: drawn-on brows, purple eye shadow, and dark lipstick contrasted with powdery skin that must have had a Botox injection or two. Large silver hoops brushed against the collar of a tight red leather coat belted over equally tight leopard print pants. Bracelets jangled at her wrists and a cloud of perfume preceded her.

"Roan, didn't you hear me? I called your name from all the way across the restaurant."

Roan clenched her teeth so hard she was probably wearing the enamel off, biting back the words she would have loved to say to Mimi. Words that had been forming in her mind since the first day her father brought the never-before-married department store saleswoman home a decade ago, a scant six months after his wife had been buried.

Mimi had exclaimed over Roan then, even tried to buddy up with her, take her for what she called "girls' days out"—manicures and champagne lunches and window shopping. Roan had endured exactly one such outing before she refused to go again. It was clear what Mimi wanted: an escape from the cramped basement apartment she rented from her sister, from the paycheck-to-paycheck existence. She'd been fifty-five then and tired of standing on her feet all day. Roan could understand that. What she had trouble with was Mimi spotting her father like an apple hanging from the low branch of a tree and grabbing hold with no thought for anyone else's welfare.

Earl Brackens wasn't rich, but he was quite comfortable, especially with the income from the leased acreage. Within a few months Mimi had quit her job, moved in, and was driving Elaine Brackens' car. She cleared out all of the deceased woman's clothes from the closets. One day, a week after Mimi moved in, Roan came home and discovered that she had thrown out her mother's nearly empty perfume bottles, as well as the crystal tray on which they had always sat.

Roan had run to her room and slammed her door. How could she tell this woman, this interloper, thief of her father's affections, that the old bottles of Shalimar and Aliage were her last connection to her mother? That nearly every day, she snuck into her mother's closet and put the bottles to her nose and breathed in the scent of the woman who had loved her more than anything in the world, pretending for a few precious seconds that she wasn't gone?

"That old stuff?" Mimi said the next morning at breakfast, as she spooned cottage cheese over canned peaches, the morning portion of her perpetual diet. Roan had told her father what had happened, and clearly he had betrayed her and told Mimi. "Honey, it was
old
. No one wears Shalimar anymore. Come on, we'll drive into town and buy you something nice."

Roan hadn't gone to school that day. She found her friends Merri and Tucker down at the goal posts before the first bell, where they were already getting high. She was looking for a change and she found one: the haze she got lost in that morning was the closest thing to home she had until she moved out.

"Oh, I guess I didn't notice you," she said frostily. Across the table, Cal lifted one eyebrow before turning to Mimi and her companion. He got out of the booth, removing his baseball cap and offering Mimi his hand.

"Good morning, ma'am. I'm Calvin Dixon. I live out at—"

"Well, any friend of Roannie's is a friend of mine!" she interrupted breathily. She stood a couple inches taller than Cal in her heels, but she still managed to bat her eyelashes in a way that allowed her to seem to look up to him. Roan rolled her eyes; Mimi had never met a man she couldn't flirt with. "And this is
my
new friend. Patton Shanks, please meet my step-daughter who I've been telling you so much about. Roannie, this is Patton. He's an
entrepreneur
." She said the last word with a verbal flourish and a questionable French accent.

"A pleasure to meet you," Roan muttered while Cal shook hands with Mimi's new boyfriend. He was medium height, thick around the middle, and bald with tufts of hair protruding from his ears. He nodded his head so vigorously that his jowls shook.

"She's even prettier than you said," he told Mimi, as though Roan wasn't even sitting there—a comment that didn't sit well with Mimi. She narrowed her eyes and tapped the table with one long, lacquered fingernail.

"So, Cal. Are you looking to tame our Roannie? Because I have to warn you, no one's been able to settle her down yet."

"Thank you, ma'am, I appreciate the warning," Cal said calmly.

"What business are you in, Calvin?" Patton wanted to know.

"Law enforcement, sir. I'm hoping to join the police force. Taking my exams the week after Thanksgiving, and then—"

Mimi jumped back from the table as though it had burned her. "The
Conway
police force?" she demanded. "Nothing but a bunch of power-mad crooks."

Roan tried to catch Cal's eye; she needed him to get off the subject fast. After fire destroyed the farmhouse, there had been an investigation and Mimi was briefly interrogated about her whereabouts when the fire began. Once she was cleared, she threatened to sue—and very well might have, if the lawyer-boyfriend she'd hired hadn't broken up with her.

But Cal wasn't paying any attention to her. "They seem like good men," he said mildly. "Chief Byrd interviewed me, and—"

Roan stomped his foot with hers, and he stopped talking and looked at her with surprise.

"Byrd's the worst of them!" Mimi snapped. "Trust me, if you've got any sense—"

"Mimi, I'm so sorry, but we were in the middle of an important discussion. I only get an hour for lunch, and so we'll have to catch up later." Roan added a smile as genuine as she could make it. There—she'd managed to behave, for once. Her father, looking down on her from heaven, would be proud.

Mimi sniffed and nodded curtly to them. "We need to be on our way anyway," she said, her temper clearly piqued. "Patton and I are going to the cinema later."

Roan waited until they'd been seated on the other side of the busy restaurant before she dared to inhale.

"The cinema, huh?" Cal said. "They don't go to the
movies
like regular people?"

"Oh, God, no. Mimi never met an air that she couldn't put on. Funny thing is, I don't think she's ever left the state of North Dakota."

"I was trying to tell her that I live in the bunkhouse on her property, but she wouldn't let me get a word in."

"So now do you see—" Roan bit her lip, wondering how to say it. "Do you understand why I can't talk to her? If she even suspected there was something of value in the house, she'd bring in a wrecking crew to find it."

"Still. You can't just—"

"Okay, okay, I
get
it." The words came out more harshly than she intended. "You'd have them haul me in and apply the letter of the law. Stocks and public flogging."

Something shifted on Cal's face. Where there had been concern before, there was...something deeper.

"Look," she said impulsively. "Having Mimi here kind of ruined my appetite. What do you say we get our lunch to go. We can eat at my house. I want—I'd like to show you something. So you'll understand."

Cal raised one eyebrow and regarded her thoughtfully. "I guess that'll work," he said. He slid out of the booth, digging for his wallet, before Roan could insist on paying.

She blew out a breath as she watched him talking to Marcia, who was manning the cash register. Marcia glanced over at Roan and gave her a finger-and-thumb circle high sign behind her back. Great: first Gayle, and then Mimi and Marcia were flirting with him. Roan felt...irritated. True, she had no claim on the man, but hadn't she walked in here with him? For all the women in the restaurant knew, she and Cal were an item.

Lovers
.

Her face was aflame by the time he came back, carrying a paper sack. "I had her toss in some lemonades...hey, you all right?"

Roan nodded faintly and grabbed her handbag. As they walked out of the restaurant, she tried to ignore all the admiring glances that followed Cal to the door.

CHAPTER SIX

Cal gave Roan the paper lunch sack to hold on her lap while he drove. It was less than a mile to her house, and neither said much on the way. The sky had darkened further while they were in the restaurant, and the earlier snowflakes gave way to cold, spitting rain that collected in gloomy rivulets on the windshield.

Roan jumped out as soon as Cal parked in front of the house, and made a run for the back door—just as the heavens opened and rain poured from the sky. Roan made it under the overhang before it really started coming down, but Cal caught the worst of it: within seconds, he was drenched.

Roan unlocked the back door, and they hurried into her apartment at the back of the house. Inside, it smelled like cloves and old lace, a girly smell that made Cal's knees weak. Roan took one look at him and laughed.

"How on earth did you manage to get so wet on the way from the truck?" she asked, and then her hand was on his face, wiping away the water seeping from his dark hair into his eyes.

The minute her fingertips brushed his skin it was as though the touch carried a bolt of lightning with it. Cal caught his breath and closed his eyes as Roan wiped carefully along his forehead, his cheeks—then withdrew her hand. Their eyes locked on each other: it was obvious that she had felt it too.

"I have to take Angel out," she breathed, as something poked against his thigh.

Cal glanced down: a brown dog had come silently into the room, and stood wagging a long, curved tail, looking up at him hopefully. She had a flat, quirky face that made it clear there was a bulldog somewhere in her family tree, and a soft pink snout that she used to bump against his hand. Her coat was glossy, speckled with quarter-sized tan spots, and she looked well-fed and healthy.

"I take it this is Angel?" he laughed, the tension broken.

"Yes. I hate leaving her all day. I turn the television on for company, but when I can, I come home and let her out at lunch."

"Well, since I'm soaked, I might as well take her out."

Roan paused, her lips parted. "Would you?" she finally asked softly.

It was as though he'd offered to build her a house, not take the dog around the block. As Cal shrugged, he wondered if simple kindness was that rare in her world. If Mimi really had been her main caregiver after her mother's death, and her father had withdrawn, maybe there hadn't been much love to go around.

His heart contracted painfully. Just as quickly, he forced himself to ignore the feeling. There was nothing to be gained by getting sentimental—or by imagining parallels to his own growing-up experience. He was here as a friend, maybe as a professional, too—if he could keep Roan from doing something self-destructive now, the odds were much better that they wouldn't have to meet later on opposite sides of the law.

"Where's her leash?" he asked gruffly.