Tempting Heat

Tempting Heat excerpt
Chapter 1

Finn Carey sagged against the door she’d just wrestled shut and let the overloaded shopping bags fall to her feet so she could fetch the phone buzzing in her pocket. She winced when she saw the face on the screen and took a steadying breath before answering.

“Hi, Mom. I just walked in the door.”

“Oh, thank God work let you out early. I hear it’s getting terrible out there, and it’s barely noon.” Halfway through the rush of words, her mother muted the Weather Channel report that had been blaring away in the background, although it didn’t silence the concern in her voice. “Was it bad out? Did you run into any trouble?”

“Not too bad and no trouble.” Finn pulled off her knit hat to dislodge the layer of snow that had settled there. In truth, it was terrible out, but she didn’t need to alarm her already overprotective mother.

“Do you have enough supplies to get you through the weekend if it gets worse? And warm clothes if you have to go out?”

“Please don’t worry, Mom. I’m safe inside and not going anywhere.” Even if she wanted to, the snow and wind had picked up so fiercely during her commute that she likely wouldn’t make it far if she ventured outside right now.

“Oh, I wish you’d move closer to me, Fiona.” Her mom barreled on as if Finn hadn’t spoken, launching into her favorite refrain. “Are you sure you don’t want to find a job downstate? I worry about you every day, all alone in Chicago. What if—”

“Alone? Jake lives four miles from me.” Finn kept her voice pleasant. It took effort.

“Oh, well, that’s different. Your brother’s so self-sufficient.”

As if Finn were any less self-sufficient than Jake. Both of Beth Carey’s children were methodical and organized, but Jake was older and male, which apparently made him impervious to blowing snow.

“I appreciate your concern, Mom, but you know I love living in Chicago.” She cradled the phone against her cheek to shrug out of her coat and hang it on the coatrack, then leaned against the door to kick off her snow-caked boots.

“But what if somebody breaks into your apartment and the police can’t get there because of the blizzard?”

She means well. She means well. She means well. Unfortunately, Finn’s usual Mom mantra wasn’t helping today. “Nobody’s breaking into my apartment.” She did her best to hide the exasperation she felt, but in the interest of self-sufficiency, it was time for her to end this call. “I gotta go. Please don’t worry about me, Mom. I love you. Bye!”

She disconnected and exhaled a steady stream of air, counting slowly in her head until the vein in her temple stopped throbbing. In truth, Finn was far more likely to be smothered by motherly concern than by one of the snowbanks already drifting waist-high against her apartment building.

A gust of wind rattled the living room windows, reminding her of the long, cold weekend she was facing in an apartment already prone to draftiness. Spying a note from her roommate on the kitchen table, she amended that assessment: a long, cold, lonely weekend in a drafty apartment.

Hey, sexy thang, Josie had written. Got called away on a last-minute work trip. Call me! XO

Finn cocked her head as she reread the note, which ended with Josie’s number scrawled at the bottom. Weird that her roommate had jotted down a number that Finn texted daily, but maybe she’d been in such a rush to beat the blizzard that she hadn’t been thinking straight. What a bummer too; it ruined Finn’s plan for them to use this snowed-in Thursday as an excuse for nothing but wine and binge-watching.

She shot off a quick text to Josie wishing her safe travels to her mystery destination, then turned to the bags she’d lugged home through the increasingly blustery snow. She conducted a quick inventory as she put away the groceries and determined that she had enough to sustain herself for several blizzards. Now all she needed to do was get into some loungewear and prepare herself for an afternoon of assuring Netflix that yes, she was still watching.

She walked past Josie’s closed bedroom door to her own room where she shucked her dress pants, silk blouse, and blazer and pulled on her robe to make the quick trip down the hall to the bathroom. A shower might help thaw out the icicles in her blood.

One luxurious sudsing later, she was toweled off and swathed in leggings, her softest T-shirt, and a fuzzy cardigan. She was braiding her wet black hair when her phone buzzed with a call from Josie.

“Hey, Finnie! You made it home okay?” An echoing clamor of voices in the background almost drowned out Josie’s words.

Finn headed toward the kitchen to get dinner started. “No problems except fighting the ravenous crowd for milk, bread, and eggs. Where are you?”

“Gotta defend those french toast supplies,” Josie laughed. “I’m temporarily stranded at the Denver airport on the way to Las Vegas.”

“Vegas, huh?” Finn paused in the middle of pulling spices down from the cabinet.

“Yep. The blizzard trapped Gil in Ontario, which means he can’t give the company presentation at the marketing association trade show on Saturday. He called this morning and gave me fifteen minutes to pack and haul ass to O’Hare to beat the snow.”

Fifteen minutes was laughably short for a clotheshorse like Josie; no wonder she’d been distracted while leaving the note.

“Sounds rough. I didn’t even hear you come in last night.” Finn stood on her tiptoes to grab the chili powder from the top shelf. “Was O’Hare a zoo?”

“Bananas. But I used my gentle persuasion on a few airline employees who managed to squeeze me onto the flights I needed.”

Finn grinned at the thought of her not-at-all-shy roommate steamrolling every employee who got in the way. “Well, enjoy Sin City, but know that I’m planning to drink all the wine I brought home to share.”

Josie gave an appreciative smack of her lips that was interrupted by the squawk of an intercom announcement. “Oh, that’s my flight! Better make sure they don’t give my seat away. Love you, byeeeee!”

Leave it to Josie to be bouncy in the middle of an airport hellscape. Shaking her head, Finn flipped on the radio so the increasingly dire weather reports could keep her company during dinner prep. She’d dumped the last of the ingredients into the slow cooker when something scuffed on the kitchen tile behind her.

“Josie?”

Finn whirled around to see a disheveled brown-haired man standing six feet away, and as she opened her mouth to shriek, one thought floated through her mind: Mom’s going to carve “I told you so” on my tombstone.

###

Tom Castle had woken up disoriented and hungover as hell, and the screaming woman wasn’t helping. He squinted in the bright light of the kitchen, so harsh compared to the dark cave he’d just left, and addressed the blur in front of him.

“Whoa, sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

As his eyes adjusted, he realized the blur was short, skinny, and brandishing a knife in his direction. He took two quick steps back.

“You’re not Josie.”

“No!”

He held his hands out in front of him in what he hoped was a soothing gesture and kept his voice calm and even. “Okay, listen, this is a misunderstanding. I just woke up, but give me a second, and I’ll get out of—”

“Tom Castle?”

If anything, the blur sounded even more hostile. But this time the hostility sounded… familiar. He risked a shuffle step forward and forced his bloodshot eyes to focus on the woman in front of him.

“Huckleberry?” he asked in amazement.

Huckleberry Finn. His lips shaped the old nickname without conscious thought, but the reminder of their high school American lit class did nothing to relax her guard. Instead, she spun around to grab a second knife with her free hand.

“What the fuck, Tom? Why are you in my apartment?”

Holy shit, Finn Carey was finally going to finish the job she’d wanted to do since the end of their senior year. They’d be finding pieces of him all over Cook County when the thaw hit.