Slow Heat Read online

  “Bubba?”

  “Probably he’s three-hundred-fifty pounds and would expect you to squeal. I mean you’re not really my type, but he might think you’re pretty.”

  Wade just looked at him. “You need help,” he finally said.

  Pace turned off the car and started to walk Wade to the door. Wade blocked his way. “Go home to Holly, Pace.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’m getting the feeling I’m not going to be alone. Go home,” he repeated. “I’ll deal with whatever’s waiting for me.”

  Pace stopped and sighed. “Call me if you need me.”

  “Yeah.” Bells were going off in Wade’s head. Hard to tell if it was his concussion, or just a general sense that his life was about to go straight into the toilet.

  He was betting the latter.

  Sam was sitting on Wade’s couch holding her breath when his front door opened.

  He walked in wearing a T-shirt and washed-out Levi’s. Hands on hips, he looked at the group in his living room. His gaze touched first on Sam and Tag, softening on both of them before locking in on his father.

  The softness vanished and the air crackled with tension as he turned and tossed his bag aside with slightly more violence than necessary.

  “Hello, son.” This from John. “How are you?”

  Wade just looked at him.

  “I guess you’re surprised to see me, huh? Samantha was kind enough to give me a ride.”

  Wade sent Sam a look that made her squirm before turning to Tag. “Hey, man,” he said.

  “Hey. Your head okay?”

  “I’ll live.”

  Tag waited a beat. “You going to start drooling or anything? Cuz that’s what happens sometimes with head injuries.”

  “This is more of a brain problem,” Wade said, and looked right at Sam. “It’s on overload and might explode.”

  She winced.

  And John sighed. “Always was dramatic,” he said to Sam.

  Tag looked back and forth between father and son. “So . . . you guys in a fight or something?”

  “No,” John said.

  “Yes,” Wade said at the same time.

  Tag was playing with the basketball that John had gotten from Walmart, trying to twirl it on his fingers as John had taught him. The guy might be a drunk but he was incredibly athletic. Not a surprise really, considering Wade’s abilities.

  Wade watched Tag fumble with the ball a moment, then slid a look at his father. “Your doing, I assume.”

  John nodded. “It’s just not quite as impressive to twirl a baseball, sorry.”

  Wade just shook his head. “Tag?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I got a bunch of new equipment delivered. Bats, gloves, athletic shoes. Want to look through it?”

  Tag dropped the basketball. “Yeah!”

  “Second room on the left at the top of the stairs.”

  “You rock!” Faster than lightning, Tag was gone.

  Sam watched Wade walk into his open kitchen. He pulled open the refrigerator door and grabbed a beer. He wasn’t moving with his usual, smooth easy stride. She knew he had to ache like hell, and when he put a hand to his ribs, she ached right along with him. She stood up, thinking he needed to be in bed, preferably with an ice pack for his ribs, since he hadn’t been given pain killers because of his slight concussion. “Are you really okay?” she murmured.

  “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

  “Wade—”

  “Really?” John asked from the couch as Tag came back down the stairs carrying a new bat and glove. “No hello, Dad, great to see you? Not even a fuck you?”

  Tag’s eyes got big at the forbidden F-word, and he opened his mouth to repeat it but Wade pointed at him, then twisted off the top of his beer and tossed it over his shoulder into the sink. “Watch your language in front of the kid,” he said to his father.

  Sam moved closer to Wade and put her hand over his on the beer. “Wade, I think alcohol’s a bad idea.”

  “Why, because I’m forty percent more likely to be an alcoholic since my father’s one? Well, guess what, Princess? My mother was a drunk, too, so I believe that gives me an eighty-percent chance.” He gestured with his beer. “Bottoms up.”

  Sam’s heart constricted at the pain in his voice, the one that matched the pain in his eyes, and she realized there was a whole hell of a lot more going on between father and son here than she could understand. “I only meant it’s a bad idea because of your concussion,” she said quietly.

  Obviously not caring, he tipped the bottle up to his lips, then lowered it before taking a sip with a softly uttered, “Goddammit.” He set the bottle on the counter with more force than necessary and drew a deep breath.

  “Actually,” John said. “Your mother always was more of a social drinker than an alcoholic.”

  Wade narrowed his eyes but didn’t speak. He didn’t have to, his eyes spoke volumes.

  John patted his hands down his body as if looking for something. Like a flask.

  No one spoke.

  “Maybe I’d better go,” Sam said.

  Wade turned to her for the first time, his eyes dark and dilated. “I’d like to talk to you first.”

  She just bet he did. “Oh. Well, it’s late, and—”

  He wrapped his fingers around her arm, his grip inexorable. “Now.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “Okay.”

  He pulled her out into the hall and pressed her back against the wall. His mouth was tight, his body even more so as he held her arms. “How?” he asked in a low, controlled voice. “Why?”

  “He called your cell phone.”

  “Yeah? So? He always calls my cell phone.”

  Their gazes locked for a long moment while she considered how to reply.

  “You answered it,” he said.

  “It said Dadon the ID, and you’d just been hurt,” she said in her defense.

  He blew out a breath. “I’m doubting he knew that.”

  She didn’t tell him that was the truth. “I saw his name and I thought . . . I don’t know. I guess I thought family is family, and—”

  “Hell, Sam. You should know better than anyone that blood ties don’t necessarily make a family.”

  She stared up at him, knowing he was right, so damn right. “He said he needed a ride,” she whispered. “And I pictured a helpless old man—”

  “That man is the opposite of helpless.”

  “Well, I’m beginning to see that now.” She winced. “And he thinks he’s staying with you.”

  He leaned into her, and over her shoulder thunked his head to the wall, which had to hurt.

  “I realize he arrived without your knowledge or permission,” she said softly. “And I’m sorry if you’re upset that I gave him a ride from the bus station, but he would have found one here with or without me.”

  “Don’t be so sure. There are plenty of bars between the bus depot and here.”

  She’d seen Wade in tense situations before. After a bad loss. Before a big game. Having a disagreement with Gage. When Pace had needed surgery in the middle of last season.

  But never once had she seen him be anything but cool and calm and unflappable about all of it.

  He wasn’t close to any of those things now, and it was an entirely new side to him. “You’re furious with me because I invaded your privacy. I’m sorry, Wade.”

  Still leaning on her, his head against the wall, he craned his neck and met her gaze, his brimming with hostility, and even worse, a vulnerability she knew he hated. It was that, more than anything else, that put her heart in her throat. “I screwed up, and I am sorry. But you can’t just ignore him.”

  “Why not? He spent the first eighteen years of my life ignoring me.”

  “Was it always just you and him?”

  “No, it was him and his booze. I wasn’t really much of a factor. I’ve asked him for years to quit, he was never interested. Now he gets a health scare and is staring his mortality