Turn Up the Heat (24 page)

“Yeah, me too. Not a whole lot of people get to see the mountain the way you did today.” Shane slid open the lone kitchen drawer, its occupants giving a metallic clank as he tossed in one of their freshly cleaned friends.

“I just hope I can return the favor next weekend. You've probably seen all the touristy stuff in Philly, though,” she replied, thinking out loud. Shane didn't really seem like the Liberty Bell kind of guy anyhow.

He stiffened, then shifted his weight as if he didn't want her to notice. “Yeah.”

Bellamy's heartbeat stuttered in her chest. The air around her felt thicker somehow, but she hauled in a breath of it anyway. “Shane, what's going on?” Damn it, she really needed to get a handle on her lack of brain-to-mouth filter, but something just wasn't right here and she didn't think she could ignore it anymore.

“You're woefully behind on your dishwashing, that's what.” He cocked his dark head and gave her a smile that would seduce the panties off a schoolmarm.

Something twisted deep in her rib cage, telling her not to bite, but the heat between her thighs begged her to shut up. So he had some mysterious aversion to the city. It's not like that was a shocker—he'd told her about it days ago. Plus, he'd said he would come see her regardless, and Shane wouldn't lie to her. Pushing him to talk about it would only sour their evening, and it was one of the last ones they had left together, for now anyway.

“I guess I am,” she finally agreed, letting her hands slip into the water.

Shane moved behind her, the combination of his heat and his touch making her forget about the sink full of kitchenware in need of washing.

Bellamy sighed and leaned into him, her back against his lean, strong chest. “Dishes,” she said weakly, but Shane just chuckled in her ear.

“Leave 'em.” He slid his hands over the front of her hips from behind, fingers biting into her as he curled them over the denim. A moan shuddered from her as he pressed his arousal to her body, pinning her without force against the sink.

“If you insist,” she murmured in a throaty whisper, thrusting the cradle of her hips back into his erection. With one swift move, Shane swung her around so they were face-to-face. Bellamy arched forward to close the slight space between them, but the reverent look on Shane's face stopped her before they could touch.

“God, every part of you is just exquisite,” he breathed, his eyes prickling her skin as they moved over her, as palpable as a touch. He leaned in just enough to dance his tongue over the shell of her ear with hot suggestion, and she shook her head against his ministrations.

“But you are,” Shane whispered, sliding his fingers through her hair. “Your hair looks perfect when it's lying over your pillow in the early sunlight.” He traced his way down her neck with both hands, letting his mouth follow their lead, and Bellamy couldn't resist the raw urge to curve up under his touch and let his words fill her as he spoke them.

“Your skin tastes like honey, right here.” He paused to kiss her, lightly scraping his lips over hers with excruciating heat, then dipped his tongue to the spot where her shoulder met her collarbone. “And here, you're even sweeter.”

Shane lowered the flat of his hands to her hips, sliding them under her thin sweater. Bellamy had no choice but to suck in a breath at the contact of his skin on hers, heat sparking right to the center of her hips before burning a path to her core.

“Shane, please.” Her thoughts were so disjointed from wanting him that her plea short-circuited with the desire that created it, but Shane heard her all the same.

“Oh, I've barely just begun,” he assured her, stroking the sides of her body with sure, even touches as he lifted her sweater over her head. Her nipples pebbled and strained against the lace of her bra, screaming to be touched. When he parted his hands over her breasts to balance their weight in his palms, an unfettered groan worked its way from Bellamy's chest to her lips.

“Don't you see how beautiful you are?” He cupped her breasts over the fabric, making her clamp down on her lip to hold back a whimper. “Here,” he whispered, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “And here,” Shane continued, and Bellamy's bones threatened to melt right inside the heat of her body. Never in her life had she wanted anyone or anything with so much white-hot intensity, so much pure, uncut desire, and she couldn't wait another second to have it.

“Shane,
please
,” she begged, her voice thready with want. “Please take me to bed. I want you so much.” She drank in every nuance of him as he stood before her in the low light of the kitchen, the contrast of his skin against the richness of the amber walls of the cabin making them seem to glow.

“But I haven't even gotten to the best part,” he protested in a drawl that rippled up her spine. “The sweetest thing about you is right here.” He paused over her slamming heart, pressing his palm over it with care. “And here.” His hands moved to cradle her face as if she were a treasure. “Because your openness is so unbridled. Your honesty makes you beautiful.” He paused again, this time to let his eyes give her a message that even his words couldn't.

He meant every word, not just as pillow talk, but as the simple truth. He meant it.

Bellamy couldn't do anything other than look into the emotion banked in Shane's dark eyes. The truth on his face made tears prick her eyes, unbidden and hot.

“Please,” she whispered, afraid to utter anything other than the one word, lest the tears start pouring out and the words racing through her mind follow.

As he led her to his bedroom, over the threshold and over the edge of want and need and reason, Shane made love to her like she was the only woman on earth, and Bellamy knew. Just like she knew she needed air to breathe and food to eat and somewhere to sleep at night, she needed Shane Griffin. It was as simple as the rightness in his words and the look in his eyes when he saw her, and somehow, even though they lived in separate worlds, being with Shane made perfect sense.

Because she was in love with him.

 

 

Shane smoothed his hand along one of Bellamy's curls, catching its softness between the pads of his fingers and the pillowcase. Christ, she was gorgeous with that glow on her face, almost angelic under the sliver of moonlight passing through the curtains.

“Get some sleep, sweetheart.” He placed a kiss on her forehead, inhaling the crisp scent of her for just a moment before pulling back. Her big green eyes focused in on him, unwavering, as they lay side by side in the shadows.

“I'm not really that tired.” She didn't say anything else, just captured his eyes with hers and held on tight.

The explanation rattled around in Shane's head, stark and serious, and although none of the words sounded right, he'd held them in for far too long to keep them buried now. Not when there was a chance Bellamy would understand.

“Shane?”

The way her whisper shaped his name perked through his blood, and he brought his eyes back to hers. “Hey.” The word arrived on a slight tremble, and he opened his mouth to just let the rest out; to tell her that as much as he didn't want to be away from her, he couldn't possibly come to the city to see her; to ask her to come back to Pine Mountain instead . . .

The shrill ring of the phone on his bedside table made him jump out of his skin.

“What the hell?” he blurted, the curse edged in anger. He propped himself up on an elbow to squint at the clock. It was barely ten P.M., but still. “No one ever freaking calls me,” he said, fumbling for the phone in the near-dark. Whoever it was had pretty crappy timing, and was about to get an earful for it.

“Maybe Jackson left something.” Bellamy sat up while the phone let out another ring that grated his nerves like sandpaper on silk.

Finally, Shane connected with the damned thing and snatched it from the cradle to press it to his ear.

“Hello?” If this was a wrong number, so help him . . .

“Shane? Jesus, Shane! Get your ass to the garage right fucking now.” Jackson's words were as garbled as they were panicked.

Shane sat up in bed, fear bolting through every inch of him. “Jax? What the hell, buddy?” He barely registered Bellamy's hand on his back, sudden, cold fear coming off her in waves.

“The garage! Hurry up. I think they just got here!”

Shane could hear voices, indistinct but clipped and serious, muffled in the background. “Who? What the fuck is going on, Jackson?” Dread gripped Shane all the way to his bones, and he jammed his legs through his jeans without feeling a thing.

“Paramedics. Grady had another heart attack, and you need to get down here
now
.”

Shane never took the main road any faster than was necessary, mainly because the forty-foot drop-off made it just plain stupid. Plus, the ride between his cabin and the garage took less than ten minutes to cover.

Under the muted moonlight, with his old F150 protesting like mad, Shane made it there in five, barely stopping to throw the thing into Park before flinging himself out the driver's side door. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Bellamy through the windshield, presumably grabbing the keys from the still-running truck, but he didn't stop. He ran toward the garage, dizzy from the eerie red glow of the ambulance lights that pulsed over the building and the sickening
whoosh
of his own blood in his ears.

Shane barged through the side door and tried to focus, but there were so many things in the garage that didn't belong there, he couldn't process any of them, much less make himself speak. Bellamy's Miata was up on the lift, transmission parts littering the floor like scattered toys. The cordless phone lay, sunny-side up, in the midst of them, and the display glowed green as if it was still on. Jackson stood stock-still in the doorway of the office, his face grave and his cell phone locked in his grip. People Shane had never seen before raced around in front of him, crouching down and shouting things that made no sense.

“Pulse is thready! BP is one-oh-six over seventy.”

“Sir, can you hear me?”

A grunted response from the floor shattered the disconnect between Shane's brain and everything around him, and all at once, everything crashed from slow-motion to real-time in an unforgiving snap.

“Grady!” Shane lunged toward the office, where two paramedics huddled over Grady's limp form, their movements sharp and efficient.

This wasn't happening. It wasn't happening.

Jackson jerked to attention. “Damn, that was fast!” He cut the distance between himself and Shane in only a few brisk strides.

Shane met his friend's eyes for less than a second before trying to elbow his way past in an effort to reach Grady, but Jackson reached around him and held firm.

“Dude, you gotta let them do their jobs. They're trying to help him.”

“I'm all that man's got,” Shane growled at Jackson. “And I'll be goddamned if he doesn't know I'm here when he needs me.” He struggled against Jackson's unyielding torso. Why wasn't Grady answering, damn it? “Grady!”

“Shane?” A tall redheaded paramedic he'd also seen tending bar at the Double Shot from time to time looked over her shoulder, but Shane was so worked up that it barely registered. “
Shane!
” she barked again, and the word sank in enough for Shane to realize it had been directed at him. Jackson's hold weakened, and Shane took full advantage, pushing past him to answer the woman.

“Yeah?”

“Teagan O'Malley, Pine Mountain Fire and Rescue. When was the last time you saw him?” Her hands moved in a flurry of sure activity over Grady's body, and she leaned in to murmur something to him before glancing back at Shane. Grady looked so pale and fragile that Shane's heart thudded around in his chest.

“This morning. He was . . .” Tired. Grady had been tired, and Shane had known it. “He was fine.” Shane forced himself to look at Grady's face.
Please wake up. Please.
“Hey, Grady. We're gonna get you fixed up, okay. Just hang in there.”

The old man's gray eyes flashed open at the sound of Shane's voice, showing a mixture of fear and pain that made Shane's blood turn to ice in his veins.

“Call . . . him . . . you have to call . . . make it right . . .”

Shane reached in to grab the old man's hand, giving it a squeeze. “Okay. Okay.”

Grady closed his eyes again, and Teagan cut in roughly. “It's better if he doesn't talk unless he has to. Know any medical history?”

Shane nodded, but couldn't speak.

“Any drug allergies that you know about? Past history of heart attack? He had one last year, right?” More movement, and the other paramedic made purposeful strides with a wheeled stretcher. Oh, shit, this was bad. No, no, no, no.

Shane forced the answers from his mouth. “Uh, no allergies. But yeah, he had a mild heart attack fourteen months ago. His meds are in the cabinet in the office.” Both hemispheres of Shane's brain were bound by a fog that made it difficult for him to think, and he felt as if his entire universe was crashing down over his head.

“I'm going to need those. Now would be good.” Shane's legs refused to move. He couldn't leave Grady's side, not even for the two seconds it would take to grab the medication bottles from the shelf in the office. “You can't let him die.” He'd meant the words to come out firm, forceful, but instead, they were a vulnerable plea.

“I'm going to do everything I possibly can to make sure that doesn't happen, okay? But you've got to let us do our job here.”

Shane caught a flash of movement, blond hair and plaid flannel, and someone handed the fistful of orange bottles to Teagan.

“Ah. Thanks.” She scanned them quickly and rattled off a bunch of syllables to her partner that sounded odd together, like some sort of code. Bits and pieces, fragments of things, crossed Shane's field of vision, but nothing made any sense. Why was Bellamy's car on the lift? And what the hell had Jackson been doing here?

“He's stable enough for now, but we need to get to Riverside Hospital. They have an advanced cardiac unit, so they'll be better able to diagnose and treat him than Pine Mountain's medical facility. Is Grady his first name or last?”

“First.” This couldn't be happening. Why hadn't Shane been there? Guilt pushed through him, relentless and fast.

He should've been there.

“You work with him. Do you know his last name? We're going to need to find his family, if he's got any.” The male paramedic began strapping Grady to the stretcher with care, and Teagan aimed an expectant look at Shane.

His heart wrenched in his chest, his voice utterly cold as the words formed in his brain and forced their way from his mouth. “His last name's Griffin, just like mine. The only other family he's got besides me is his son, Charles Griffin, Esquire. My father.”

 

 

Bellamy blinked at Shane and took an involuntary step backward as she reeled in an equal mix of shock and confusion.

Shane was Grady's grandson? But why hadn't he said anything to her?

Recognition shot through her as she stood, dumbfounded, next to Jackson. No wonder Grady had seemed so familiar to her when she'd met him that morning. Shane's mannerisms were an exact mirror of Grady's, right down to the inflection in his voice when Shane had called her “darlin'” the other day. Even if the physical resemblance was only slight, they were definitely cut from the same cloth. How had she not seen it before?

“Jesus,” Jackson said, his chiseled jaw falling open. “Grady's his grandfather?”

“You didn't know either?” Shock rebounded through her chest.

“No. He never said anything,” Jackson replied in a low voice, shaking his head. “After Grady had that heart attack last year, Shane just showed up. I always thought it was a stroke of luck for the old man, you know, that some drifter came along to save the day. But Shane never told me where he came
from
.”

Bellamy nodded, her thoughts racing on fast-forward. Shane's devotion was a little clearer, but still. Jackson was right. He had to have come from somewhere, left something behind, in order to help Grady out.

Wait a second . . . Charles Griffin,
Esquire
? Bellamy's stomach dropped like a rock.

Oh,
God
. He couldn't possibly be Charles Griffin, Philadelphia's most prominent attorney, could he? Bellamy had heard the name in certain circles at the bank, and while his offices didn't specialize in real estate, per se, everyone who was anyone in the world of business had at least heard of the law firm. His name was in the papers on a regular basis, in both local news and on the social page.

But of course she hadn't connected the dots. Why the hell would she?

Shane's voice, loud and argumentative, yanked her focus back to the garage. “I'm going with you,” he insisted, following the paramedics and the stretcher to the door.

“Standard operating procedure, Mr. Griffin. No passengers.” The female paramedic's words were curt and suggested zero wiggle room.

Shane didn't seem to care. “Like hell. I'm going.”

Bellamy sprang into action, shoving her fist into the pocket of her jeans where she'd stashed Shane's truck keys, and they all moved toward the door in a bustle of movement and sound.

The paramedic stared him down. “What you're doing is wasting precious seconds of my time. I get that you're worried, but if you want me to save his life, you have to get out of my way and let me
do it
.”

Shane stopped short at her order, helplessly watching in defeat as she and her partner loaded the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Bellamy passed the keys to Jackson, who wordlessly went to start Shane's truck. Out of sheer instinct, she put her hand on Shane's shoulder, realizing only after the fact that he might not want her to.

He clutched her hand for a second before slumping into her, and she barely got her arm around him in time to hold him up.

“Okay,” she whispered into him, biting back tears with every breath. “Okay. Jackson's waiting, Shane. We're going to follow them the whole way there. Come on.”

The redhead jumped out the back of the ambulance, slamming the doors to the rig with finality before turning toward the driver's side.

“I'm sorry,” she said over her shoulder. “I really am. But I promise we'll do all we can to keep him safe.”

Shane's eyes surged with raw emotion as he looked at her. “I'm holding you to that.”

With a nod, the woman climbed into the ambulance and pulled out into the dead of night.

 

 

Shane fought the urge to vomit as Jackson navigated the turns on the main road down the mountain. His head reeled with unanswered questions and impending dread, only one of which he could do anything about.

“How . . . how did you know about Grady?” he asked Jackson, whose stony blue gaze didn't move from the road as he answered.

“After I left your place, I stopped by the Double Shot to see what was going on. It was pretty dead, so I decided to take off, and I saw the ambulance pulling in as I passed by on my way home. Teagan said Grady called nine-one-one, complaining of chest pain. That's when I called you.”

Shane reached behind the seat for Bellamy's hand. She'd managed to squeeze herself across the narrow bench in the back of the truck, which couldn't be comfortable, but she hadn't even hesitated to get in.

“He was working on that tranny, doing the job by himself,” Shane realized out loud. From the looks of things, Grady had gotten a good deal of the work done, too, so he had to have pulled a ten-hour day, maybe even twelve, considering Lucky Gunderson's Cadillac. That kind of day would've turned even the healthiest guy into a zombie.

Shane swallowed past the Sahara desert in his throat. What would it end up doing to Grady?

“He said he would call me. He was supposed to call me when that stupid tranny came in.” Shane let out a low curse under his breath, and Bellamy's hand froze in his.

“This isn't your fault, Shane.”

“This is
absolutely
my fault,” he snapped, his gut triple-knotting. “He's my responsibility, and I should've been there.”

“Okay, take it easy. Getting upset sure won't fix anything,” Jackson said with care. “Let's just get to the hospital. Do you want to try my cell to call your, uh, father?”

Oh,
fuck
. This was going to go from bad to worse. Shane pinched the bridge of his nose. “No.” No way was he having that conversation with the two of them in the car to overhear it. It was going to be bad enough as it was. God
damn
it, he hadn't had a chance to tell Bellamy the truth.

But he couldn't worry about that now.

“My father hasn't wanted to see Grady for twenty years. A few more hours should suit him just fine.”

As soon as his father showed up, every secret Shane had ever kept would be out in the open, and there would be no hiding from any of it.

With that, he let Bellamy's fingers slip from his, letting her go before she could beat him to it.

Bellamy stared into the Styrofoam cup of cold coffee in her hands, catching her distorted reflection in the dark liquid. The clock on the wall showed half past midnight, and although she was weary down to her bones, sleep was the furthest thing from her mind. She rubbed her forehead as if the motion would jump-start her brain into making sense of the last few hours.