Heat Wave (18 page)

Caleb opened his menu, and she turned her
attention to the heavy, leather-bound menu as well. He urged her to
try the bouillabaisse, which sounded delicious, although it was
probably more than she could consume. He ordered steak au poivre
for himself, then settled back in his seat and cupped the bowl of
his wine glass with his palm, his gaze on their view of the thin
clouds rippling across the sky above the ocean, turning pink and
purple as the sunlight faded into dusk. He seemed deep in thought,
and Meredith deemed it best not to interrupt him.

“Have you talked to your union rep?” he
finally asked.

“Not yet. This all just happened as I was
about to leave the building for the day.”

“And the principal didn’t actually fire you,
right?”

“He asked me to take a leave of absence for
the remainder of the school term. It’s review time for the
students, preparation for finals, summing up of the year’s work.
For me to take a leave of absence now would be like walking out of
a movie five minutes before the end.”

“And you think this leave of absence will
lead to a firing?”

His ordered, probing questions told her he
was thinking as a lawyer, not as a man who’d kissed her, a man
who’d once made wild love to her. This was good, she reminded
herself. She wanted his logic, not his passion. “I don’t know if
I’d be outright fired, but being forced to take a leave certainly
doesn’t bode well for my getting tenure.”

He nodded. Their waiter reappeared with
salads. Meredith wasn’t sure if her appetite was stirred by the
appealing array of leafy greens, ruby red tomatoes, and delicate
shaves of parmesan cheese, or by Caleb’s calm, meticulous analysis
of her situation. Either way, the salad’s fresh flavors and
textures tasted wonderful.

“You’ve got several
options,” he said between forkfuls of his own salad. “One, you can
present yourself as a victim. Some douchebag assaulted you on a
beach, and you were only trying to defend yourself and catch the
miscreant.” He grinned when he said that word, and she grinned
back, as if
miscreant
was their secret password. “Two, you can take the tack you
took when you first told me what happened, and argue that it’s
discriminatory to penalize a woman who goes topless on a beach when
men go topless on the beach all the time and no one blinks an eye.
That argument won’t hold up in court, but it might persuade the
principal.”

She nodded.

“Three—” he speared a chunk of tomato,
chewed, swallowed “—you can figure out the identity of the
douchebag who dumped the ice on you and make him confess. You can
guilt him into arguing your case for you.”

“That would be my preferred approach,” she
said. “But whether it would work would depend on who the miscreant
is.”

“If it’s possible to get the video, Ed Nolan
will get it. Then you can decide the best course of action.”

Meredith nodded.

They finished their salads, sipped their
wine, and said little. Beyond the glass panes, the sky grew darker,
the colors of the clouds more vivid until the gathering darkness
bled them to whispers of gray. Somehow, the silence didn’t bother
Meredith. Caleb had laid out her options, neatly and precisely.
There was nothing more to say.

She heard the murmur of conversations from
other tables. She imagined the rhythmic whoosh of the ocean’s waves
breaking against the beach just a few hundred feet away. She felt
comfortable sitting with Caleb and not talking, not even thinking
about her precarious situation for a few tranquil minutes.
Obsessing about whether she might lose her job was not going to
save it. Fretting about her reputation was not going to undo what
had happened on the beach. Showing up in her bridesmaid’s dress at
Mary Jean’s wedding without a tan line striping her back wasn’t
going to make anyone gasp in awe.

The waiter arrived with their entrees, and
Meredith realized how hungry she was, after all. She’d been too
upset to eat lunch at school, and even more upset after her brief
meeting with Stuart, but now… She felt calmer. Caleb had talked her
down. Caleb, with his analytical mind, his skill at breaking things
into clear options, his ability to persuade her, somehow, that this
problem could be solved.

The lawyers in her family didn’t approach
their work the way Caleb did. They complicated things—often
deliberately, so their clients would be even more dependent on
them. They wrapped every problem in sticky strands of legalese
jargon and then unraveled the tangle in such a way that their
clients were amazed and happy to pay their staggering fees.
Meredith didn’t criticize; her father’s generous income had
afforded her a comfortable childhood in a spacious house, and four
years at a pricy private college. She was grateful.

But she also understood, after a lifetime of
observing her father, that she would never want to do what he and
her brother and brother-in-law did. She often felt that she solved
more problems as a teacher than her relatives did as attorneys.

Caleb consumed a chunk of steak, then turned
to Meredith. Evidently, while she’d been thinking negative thoughts
about lawyers, he’d still been ruminating on her situation. “Once
you’ve identified the douchebag—”

“I prefer
miscreant,
” she chided
gently. “That other word is so crude.”

“Fine. Once you’ve identified the
miscreanting douchebag—” he flashed another grin, this one
mischievous “—the question is how you coerce him into salvaging
your career. Would you threaten to file an assault charge against
him?”

“For dumping ice on me? What if he claims it
was an accident? He could have inadvertently spilled some of his
drink on my back while he was walking by.”

“He could have. But he didn’t. The person
recording the scene was probably an accomplice. This sort of crap
happens, Meredith. People up-skirt. They sneak into restrooms and
locker rooms and fitting rooms at department stores, and they
record women in their underwear. You might want to consider
redress. A civil suit, an assault charge…”

“Drumming up business, are you?”

“I won’t charge you. I’d much rather have
you indebted to me.”

She wasn’t sure how to take that, so she let
it slide. “Wouldn’t an assault charge be a criminal matter? The
police would handle it.”

“I’d still want you to owe
me,” he said. His dimpled smile implied he was teasing her, but his
steady, penetrating stare seemed terribly serious. He lowered his
fork and knife and leaned toward her, just enough to convey that,
yes, he was deadly serious. “I want you, Meredith. Last Friday, you
wanted me just as much. And for the life of me, I have no idea what
happened afterward—except that you walked out on me. I don’t know
about you, but I had an awful weekend. It should have been the best
weekend of my life. It
would
have been the best weekend of my life if I’d spent
it with you. But you left.”

Her appetite faded again.
She lowered her spoon and gazed at the aromatic broth, the chunks
of fish, the plump pink curls of shrimp, the black shells of the
mussels. Then she took a deep breath and lifted her gaze back to
him. If she was tough enough to fight Stuart Kezerian and whoever
her attacker—the
miscreant
—was, she ought to be tough
enough to face Caleb.

“It was the song,” she said.

“‘
Heat Wave’?”

She nodded. “I felt as if
we’d…” She wanted to say
made
love
, but it really hadn’t been that.
They’d hardly known each other. How could love have been a part of
it? “Had sex,” she continued, “because of that song. I’ve always
kept my distance from lawyers—romantically, at least. I grew up
with lawyers. I know how they operate, and I’ve always felt a bit
uncomfortable about that. So other than the fact that you’re a
nice-looking man, there was no reason I should have gone back to
your house with you, or kissed you, or…” Her courage began to
falter.

“Made love,” he supplied.

“Had sex,” she repeated. But then we heard
the song, and I don’t know how or why, but it affected us in some
way. It affected our judgment, our impulse control…. This is not
the kind of woman I am. I don’t have sex with men just because I
heard some song coming out of an old jukebox in a bar.” She sighed,
drained from having confessed all that, but proud of herself for
having gotten the words out. “The whole thing unnerved me.”

“Does it really matter why it happened?” His
voice was low, velvet-soft. He augmented its seductive effect by
reaching past his plate and capturing her hand in his. “It
happened. It was great. It should happen again.”

He stroked her inner wrist with his thumb, a
light caress that sent a surge of sensation up her arm. Even
without the song, she was caught in the power of a heat wave.
Caleb’s touch enchanted her as much as the song had. Just as the
singers wailed, she felt that burning flame.

Her blazing desire for Caleb frightened her.
“I’m not going to your house tonight,” she warned.

“But you want to,” he guessed.

To her chagrin, her head bobbed in a meek
nod.

“We won’t go to my house,” he promised, then
lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her palm. “I’ll be right
back.”

Before she could stop him, he was striding
across the room and out through the French doors near the hostess
station. She watched him with a mix of excitement and despair. Then
she pressed her hand to her mouth, as if she could transfer his
kiss from her palm to her lips.

The bouillabaisse was delicious, but her
appetite was really and truly gone for good. Instead she took a sip
of wine, wondering how much she’d have to consume to get drunk
before Caleb returned. But what good would getting drunk do her?
She was already on fire. Alcohol was flammable; adding too much
wine to the mix might cause a major conflagration.

She took another small sip and peered
through the window. Nightfall made it difficult to distinguish the
earth from the sea, the sea from the sky. All she saw were
silhouettes and shadows—and then Caleb’s reflection as he reentered
the dining room and strolled to their table. He smiled, leaned over
to pull out her chair, and touched his lips to the sensitive skin
just below her ear. “Come on,” he said, taking her hand and helping
her to her feet.

“Where are we going?”

“I got us a room.”

“Here?”

He grinned. “Like I said, I’ve got an in
with the management. I asked the hostess to pack up our food and
keep it warm, in case we want it later.” He reached for the wine
bottle and pressed the cork back into it. “This we can take with
us.”

Her brain scrambled to keep up with him. “We
can’t spend the night here,” she argued as they crossed the dining
room to the exit. He held his jacket and the wine bottle in one
hand, and his free hand held hers. “We don’t have anything with us.
Toothbrushes, toiletries—”

“It’s taken care of,” he assured her,
escorting her down the hall to that grand staircase in the
lobby.

“And clothes? I can’t show up at the high
school tomorrow wearing what I wore today.”

“We’ll wake up early, go home, and
change.”

And if I sleep with
you,
she almost blurted out,
I might do something stupid, like fall in love
with you.
She couldn’t fall in love with
him, at least not yet. She’d known him such a brief time. Sex was
about lust, but sleeping with someone—waking up with him—was about
love. Was she truly ready for that?

It didn’t matter. They were already heading
up the stairs. Trotting, practically running, as if they couldn’t
wait to shut themselves up inside a room and go at it.

 
Caleb stopped at a
door and slid the key card into the slot. The door swung open, and
Meredith realized it was true. She couldn’t wait.

As soon as the door clicked shut behind
them, she turned to face Caleb. “This is crazy,” she whispered, and
then they were kissing.

Their room was obviously not the finest
accommodation at the Ocean Bluff Inn. It was small, barely large
enough for a queen-size bed, a compact oak dresser, and a rocking
chair. The window overlooked the swimming pool, not the ocean.

But there was that bed, made with
fresh-scented linens and a puffy white comforter. There were two
baskets of toiletries, side by side on the vanity in the bathroom.
Both contained toothbrushes, small tubes of toothpaste, pocket
combs, and mini-bottles of mouthwash. Meredith’s basket also held
some make-up removal pads, although she didn’t seem to be wearing
much make-up. More important, Caleb’s basket held some condoms.

God bless Monica Reinhart. When he’d found
her—back in her office, no longer covering the front desk—and asked
if she might have a free room for the night, she’d mumbled
something about how peak vacation season had begun Memorial Day
weekend, and the hotel was booked pretty solid. Then she’d clicked
around on her computer for a minute, let out a cheer of “Yes!” and
walked with him to the front desk, where she’d imprinted his credit
card and handed him the room key. “Everything’s taken care of,”
she’d said.

He looked at those condoms and sent another
prayer of gratitude heavenward. Then he redirected his prayer to
Monica, who deserved more credit than heaven for supplying guests
with the necessities.

Leaving everything else in the basket, he
carried the stash of foil envelopes back to the main room and
tossed them onto one of the night tables. Then he gathered Meredith
back into his arms. At least for now, she’d stopped doubting,
stopped worrying, and accepted the attraction burning between
them—music, magic, whatever the hell it was. No more questions. No
more fretting about showing up at work tomorrow in the same apparel
she’d worn today. Just kissing. Touching. Needing. Yearning.