Heating up the Holidays Read online

  But of all the cards for Ryan to have picked…Yeah, she could see why he’d come straight here, looking all earnest and sorry.

  She felt the cheese grater slip from her hands as she looked back at him.

  “Wow, weird coincidence, huh?” she said casually, as if she didn’t already know it was the hand of fate telling her to get laid and overcome her past.

  “Totally weird. I have to admit, it kind of freaked me out.”

  Lorelei turned her attention back to the cheese. She scooped the shreds up in her hands and dumped them into a bowl. Then she began washing and chopping vegetables.

  “I guess, being a doctor, you probably don’t believe in anything mystical,” Ryan said to her back.

  She shrugged, thinking again of Kinsei. “Back in medical school, I would have said no, but being a doctor, I’ve seen all kinds of things I can’t explain. The only thing experience teaches me is that there’s a lot I don’t understand.”

  She mixed eggs with the frittata ingredients, then greased a pie pan, poured everything in, and put the dish in the oven to bake. It was her lazy-cook’s method for making a frittata, since it didn’t require her to stand over the stove and watch anything.

  Once she’d poured them each a cup of coffee, she set the table with sugar and cream, then pulled up a chair across from Ryan.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Do you believe in fate or ghosts or UFOs or anything?”

  “I’m probably in the same camp as you. Experience has taught me to be open-minded.”

  “So,” she finally dared to ask, seeing now how easy her resolution with the past might be. “Do you think fate is telling us we need to go back to the hot springs?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding a little odd. “I feel silly saying it, but I do.”

  6

  R YAN COULD hardly believe his luck. He’d never expected his apology to Lorelei to go so smoothly, and better yet, to end with her asking him to the hot springs. It would be the perfect way to make up for the past. He’d show her-and himself-that he wasn’t the jerk kid he used to be.

  As he sipped his coffee, he relaxed. With the heat from the kitchen stove and the morning light pouring in through the big picture window, the room felt cozy and intimate. If he closed his eyes, he’d have felt like he was home.

  But with Lorelei sitting across from him, the last thing he wanted to do was close his eyes. He could hardly stop staring at her. She held such familiarity, this nearly forgotten piece of his past, like an old beloved toy that had slipped from his memory until he’d stumbled upon it by accident. Except, of course, she hadn’t been sitting around in an attic waiting to be rediscovered. She’d been wandering the world, having what had no doubt been an interesting life, and he wanted to know what had filled the space between then and now.

  Not that she owed him any such information. They’d had sex exactly once-he’d even been her first lover, which kind of blew his mind now that he’d had the fact confirmed-but everything he knew about her was based on his very limited perspective of who she had been fifteen years ago.

  He wanted to know more, but she spoke up first.

  “It must have been a busy night for you guys last night, with the storm and all.”

  “It was the most calls in one night that we’ve had all year. And that’s saying something considering the fire season we had this year.”

  “Wow. I hope no one was hurt.”

  “Luckily, you were the most endangered soul I encountered,” he said with a grin. “There was an oak tree branch that caved in a roof over on El Segundo Avenue, but no one was in the part of the house that was affected.”

  She smiled into her coffee. “I was horrified when you showed up to get me off the roof.”

  “I don’t blame you. That was a pretty spectacular screwup, with the pj bottoms and all.”

  “I’m not as handy as I think I am sometimes.”

  “So you just moved in here a few weeks ago, huh?”

  “Yes. For the past two years I was serving in the Peace Corps, in Kenya, and when my tour ended, I felt…drawn back home, I guess.”

  “That must have been an incredible experience.”

  “It was life-changing. I thought for a while that I’d never leave Africa. I had this dream of joining Doctors without Borders, but lots of different things…signs…whatever…just kept telling me I needed to come back here to Ocean Harbor Beach.”

  “I’m glad you did. It’s great to see you again. I’m not really in touch with many people from high school anymore, but I always wondered what happened to you.”

  Which was true. He might have been a shallow, self-centered shithead as a teen, but Lorelei was unique enough that she had come to mind now and again, and he couldn’t help wondering what had become of his most brilliant classmate.

  “What have you been up to since high school?” she asked.

  “Oh, the usual. Going to college, surfing, backpacking around Europe, getting married, getting divorced-perhaps not exactly in that order, but you get the idea.”

  “You’ve been married?”

  “To a girl I met in college. Bad idea. It lasted two years, and then we realized we hated each other. Or, at least, I realized it when she told me she thought she was in love with my best friend.”

  “Ouch. I’m sorry,” she said, wincing.

  “It’s okay. We already knew the marriage wasn’t working when it happened. But it still hurt like hell. Definitely humbled me, made me realize I’m not God’s gift to women or anything.”

  He grinned ruefully, and she smiled back.

  “That’s always a healthy realization. How long since you got divorced?”

  “Five years.”

  “Dating anyone?” she asked, and if he had been his younger, cockier self, he’d have said her tone was kind of…provocative.

  Could it be that after how horribly he’d behaved, she might still be attracted to him?

  No, he was imagining things.

  “Nope, how about you?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve become one of those career-obsessed drones who has no social life,” she joked. “Definitely not dating right now.”

  “I’ll bet you left behind at least a few Peace Corps volunteers who were devastated to see you go.”

  She smiled ironically. “Perhaps, if only because I’m a hard worker and it meant they’d have to pick up the slack in my absence.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, but she ignored him and went to the stove to check on breakfast, which was smelling pretty damn delicious right now.

  She pulled the lightly browned egg dish from the oven, and Ryan’s stomach growled. He’d been too busy to eat last night, except for a sandwich he’d grabbed around five in the morning on the way to a call.

  A minute later she was getting toast out of the toaster. After preparing two plates, she placed one in front of him, along with utensils and a napkin. “It’s a frittata,” she said. “Would you like jam for your toast?”

  “No thanks. This looks delicious.”

  “So.” She took her place at the table again. “What do you do with yourself when you’re not fighting fires?”

  Ryan felt relieved that she really did seem to be genuinely interested in him as a person, because he was finding himself even more interested in her than he’d thought he’d be. Not only did she look dynamite in a tank top and panties, but she had an interesting career and past that he wanted to know more about. On top of the fact that she was brilliant, and, he thought, after taking his first bite of frittata-a great cook, too.

  He found himself wanting to impress her. “I play the guitar, write songs, play in a funky little blues band sometimes…”

  “Really? Is there anywhere I can see you play soon?”

  “Hmm…Maybe.”

  He was struck with an idea. Maybe a brilliant idea. He’d write a song. For her. And play it at the hot springs, to say he was sorry.

  It could be corny, or it could be the sm