Red Hot (12 page)

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Authors: Niobia Bryant

BOOK: Red Hot
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Kaitlyn took another shower and made her way out of the apartment in jean leggings and a fitted black tee, with
I'M VERY RICH, BITCH
in Swarovski crystals à la reality-TV star NeNe Leakes. She stood beside the railing, trying to figure out what to do with her day.
She looked up as Quinton came up the stairs and eyed her.
She hated how her heart fluttered at the sight of him in long-sleeved dark blue T-shirt and jeans. Since he wasn't in his usual khaki-and-shirt attire, she had learned over the last two weeks that he was doing manual labor around the property.
“All dressed and nowhere to go,” he said, walking past her to the last apartment on the second level.
“I can say the same about you,” she finally shot back.
The thing was, he was right. She had absolutely nowhere to go.
With her bon voyage party thrown by Tandy and Anola last night, she was supposed to be heading to Italy, which meant the days of hanging out at their cribs were over. Without her credit cards or thick cash flow, shopping was torture.
Kaitlyn was punishing her parents, so she couldn't even go to the ranch to ride her horse. The rest of the family was working. Her mother was babysitting her younger nephews, and Kadina was in school.
She released a heavy breath as she eyed the traffic going by on the road beyond the trees lining the front of the property.
Kaitlyn knew there was no way she could make it sitting up in that little apartment all day. So what was the plan? It was becoming more and more obvious that she needed one.
C
HAPTER
8
Kaitlyn pulled her vehicle onto the packed-dirt front parking lot of Donnie's Diner. Her father and brothers loved to come there for lunch. She was hoping to catch a late breakfast and get out before she ran into her father and had to muster the nerve and disrespect
not
to speak to him in person. Kaitlyn honestly didn't think she could pull that off.
And that's why when her niece occasionally spent the weekend with her, she purposefully avoided Kadina's tricky moves to get her to show up for one of their ritual Sunday dinner at her parents'.
She didn't spot any of their vehicles, so she made her way inside Holtsville's lone diner and put in her order for takeout.
“Here you go. Two specials for my two favorite customers. Enjoy, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson.”
Kaitlyn looked on and smiled as she watched the waitress hand the elderly married couple glasses of iced mint tea and two plates of breakfast from her tray.
“Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson,” Kaitlyn said with a little wave.
They waved back. The Johnsons lived not very far from her parents' house, and the rear of their properties connected. Growing up, before she realized that she was not to do everything her elder brothers did, she and her siblings—excluding the hyperallergic Kaeden—had snuck onto the Jacksons' apple orchard. There they ate the juicy fruits from the trees until they all felt ready to bust.
They thought they were sneaky, but the Johnsons would always laugh about it with their parents when they crossed paths.
“You look especially pretty today, Kaitlyn,” Sally said as she sipped her tea.
Kaitlyn batted her lashes. “Well, thank you. Thank you very much,” she said playfully.
“How are your parents?” Clarence asked, a portly, dark-skinned man with low-cut hair as white as snow.
“They're good,” she lied.
“I saw one of your brothers at the horse auction the other night. For the life of me, I don't know which one,” he said around a bite of his food. His free hand was locked on his wife's ample thigh. “Hell, they all look alike.”
Sally laughed and leaned back in her chair. “All good-looking,” she said.
Kaitlyn smiled as he pretended to look offended, causing his wife to lean over and plant a kiss on his cheek.
“I heard you were sick recently. Are you feeling better, Mr. Johnson?” she asked as the waitress signaled that her to-go order was ready.
“I'm all better now,” he said, looking at his wife with a twinkle in his eye. “Sally liked playing nurse.”
The woman's caramel complexion shaded with a pink blush. “Clarence, you talk too much.”
“And you love it.”
“That I do.”
Kaitlyn smiled as the couple, nearly ninety years old, leaned in for a firm kiss. She waved and left them alone, moving to the counter to pay for her order of French toast and bacon.
That would be her parents in another twenty years or so. In love with the same person for well over sixty years.
Was
she
ready to lock it in with someone for the next forty years? Hell to the no. Those “will I find love” questions weren't on her mind: Would she have someone to grow old with? Cherish memories with? Laugh and still play with? Build a family with?
Uhm. No.
But . . .
Kaitlyn could appreciate those who wanted it and found it.
And the Johnsons are cute. Too cute.
Maybe one day. But not now. Definitely not.
As she left the restaurant, she glanced back at the elderly couple one last time.
Maybe if I meet the right man, though . . .
“Take out?”
Kaitlyn stopped as Quint walked into the restaurant and stood before her. Close. Too close.
“Yeah,” she said, moving past him to push open the door to the restaurant.
She felt his hand lightly touch her back, and she looked over her shoulder at him in question.
“No smart comment? No snappy comeback?” he asked.
As she looked into his eyes—those dark and deep eyes always seeming to brim with intensity—she remembered their interaction in her kitchen. It was her turn to run scared.
“That's it,” she said, turning to leave.
Kaitlyn left the restaurant and climbed into her car. When she eventually pulled into her parking spot at the complex, she had absolutely no desire to spend her day—the entire day—just cooped up in her apartment.
Sliding on her shades, she lowered her convertible top, reclined her driver's seat, and said a silent prayer that the bird's aim was off as she chewed on a piece of bacon and enjoyed the feel of the sun.
“Can I join you?”
Kaitlyn looked left and then right before looking up. Over the rim of her shades, her eyebrows dipped to see Mr. Hanson smiling down at her. He was in nothing but his pajama bottoms.
“Call your wife and ask her,” Kaitlyn called up to him before pushing her shades back down. “
Or
you can come downstairs and ask your girlfriend.”
He chuckled. “I don't know what you talking about.”
“And I don't care about what I'm talking about,” she offered in an uninterested tone as she reached for another slice of bacon to chew on and closed her eyes.
She opened her eyes behind her shades a few moments later and was glad to see he was gone. It took everything she had in her not to tell him that his chest hair was so sparse and so prickly that it looked like a connect-the-dots sheet in a puzzle book.
He didn't work. He was barely cute. And he was cheating on his wife while she worked the late-night shift.
“Nope. Not even cute. No, thank you. I'll pass,” she said aloud as she kicked off her patent leather spiked heels and kicked her feet over the side of the car.
The slight breeze felt good as she wiggled her toes and considered just hitting the highway and driving until she was ready to turn around and come back.
Or maybe she could call an ex-lover for a steamy rendezvous. If DJ Jean from Paris called, she might just answer his call to amuse herself.
Or she could go and watch
The Young and the Restless
with Mrs. Harper and pretend a stuffed dead dog wasn't sitting in a dog bed. Staring. Not living. His physical form was locked in the crazy world of a little old lady who refused to accept that the dog was dead. And stuffed. And not listening to her.
“Man, bump this shit,” she said, sitting up to pull on her shoes before she climbed from the car.
Quint pulled up and parked in the empty space next to her.
Kaitlyn spared him a glance as she gathered her purse and take-out container before raising the roof.
“You really like chancing it with the birds,” he said as he came around the front of his truck.
Kaitlyn shrugged. “Bird shit woulda broke up the monotony.”
Quint eyed her. “Is it okay to ask you something?”
Kaitlyn leaned against her car and eyed him from behind her shades as she pretended not to feel her pulse and her heart and stomach fluttering.
He really looks good in dark blue.
“No insults. Not today,” she advised him. “And last night never happened.”
“No, you wished last night never happened.”
Kaitlyn crossed her arms over her chest. “That's not a question.”
“Okay. A'ight. What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Quint eyed Kaitlyn as he asked the question. He saw her visibly stiffen. “Seriously,” he added.
“I am grown . . . or can't you tell?” she asked.
He allowed his eyes to travel along the length of her body. How could he not see that? And when he left her apartment in the wee hours of the morning, he found he couldn't release all the nervous energy he felt. He couldn't forget how being so near to her had made him feel.
He couldn't get past how soft her skin was to his touch.
The glazed look in her eyes.
The slight parting of her lips.
The shiver that raced across her body.
All of those moments came back to him until he did feel horny and frustrated, as she had accused.
He had meant to taunt and tease her; and instead, she had turned the tables to taunt and tease him.
“Say you want me, Quinton.”
Caught up in that energy-filled bubble they had created, he realized that the words had almost tumbled from his lips. It took everything in him not to lift her up and press his body between her legs as they wrapped around his waist and he buried his head in her cleavage.
Quint blinked away an image of caressing her breasts and rubbing them before his fingertips brought her nipples to life.
“Uhm, physically . . . yes. But on other levels—”
Kaitlyn frowned. “What other levels?” she snapped.
Quint opened his own take-out container and lifted his cheeseburger to take a huge bite of it as he shrugged one shoulder. “Since you moved in here, I've seen you constantly on the go, partying it up, dressed like an A-list celebrity, but what else is there to know about you?”
Kaitlyn raised her shades. “Why do you care?” she asked, eyeing him.
“I don't.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because you should care,” he said frankly before taking another bite.
“Who says I don't?”
Quint set his container on the hood of his pickup. “Not ‘who says' it.
What says
it. And what says you don't are your actions. That's what.”
Kaitlyn pulled her tote up higher on her arm as she walked past him. “You are the most judgmental person I think I have ever met. Thing is, you really need to find somebody who gives a damn what you think,” she told him over her shoulder as she climbed the stairs.
“It's your life,” Quint called over his shoulder as he picked up the container and made his way across the parking lot to his office. He didn't spare her another glance as he unlocked the door.
He had more important things to concern himself with than trying to stop a woman from making a train wreck of her life. He only had one daughter to raise—he didn't need a second project.
Their little convo just reaffirmed for him that his physical reaction to Kaitlyn was just that—purely physical. She was another Vita in the making, no matter how much that offended her.
Hell with it.
He checked the answering machine for messages and shot his boss an e-mail updating him on the property. Through the window he saw the FedEx truck drive onto the property. He rose to his feet and looked out the door as the deliveryman made his way to his apartment's front door.
Quint made his way across the parking lot as the man knocked. He was holding a sizable box in his arms. Quint's eyes shifted up to take in Kaitlyn sitting outside her door in one of the chairs from her kitchen table. He ignored her.
“That's for me?” he asked the man.
The tall, fair-skinned redhead turned. “This your apartment?” he asked, his accent more Texas twang than Southern drawl.
Quint unlocked the door to prove it and then digitally signed for the box before looking down at the label.
“Have a good one,” he called out to the man before backing into the apartment to set the box on the oversized coffee table.
It was from Vita.
Quint shook his head as he reached for his cell phone to call her. He ended the call before it connected when he remembered the five-hour time difference. It was just a little after 7:00
A.M.
in Hawaii.

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