Page 11 of Bitter Heat

“Everyone is curious.”

“You’re the last person I’d confide in.”

“Chili’s boiling.”

She whirled and whipped the pot off the fire before it burned. “Get out of here! You’re distracting me.”

She reached for a cabinet, letting it swing open close enough to his face to make him back off. After he left the tiny kitchen, she made another cup of tea. She left the quilt on the counter so she could carry her tea and food back into the living room. Roth had built the fire into a blaze, so she sat and basked in the heat before she dug in. She didn’t realize how hungry she was until she took her first bite. She was halfway through her meal when he joined her. He sat on the opposite end of the couch and propped his boots on the raised hearth. They ate in silence. She went back for seconds and made another pot of tea. When she was finished, she curled up in her corner of the couch with the quilt wrapped around her. Now that she was clean, fed, and warm, she relaxed.

The sound of the crackling fire soothed her fried nerves and blocked out the storm raging outside. She silently willed Mother Nature to calm the fuck down so she could get out of here. Women had an obligation to help each other out, right?

She stiffened when Roth returned from the kitchen and settled beside her. The damn couch was too small and not that comfortable. Like everything Kaia owned, it was old and in desperate need of an update. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Roth angled in her direction. He rested his knee on the cushion between them and draped his arm along the back of the couch.

He said nothing.

He thrived on other’s discomfort. She could feel his eyes moving over her. She inwardly bristled and tried to don an indifferent expression, but she was out of practice. Roth knew how to get under people’s skin and was doing a damn good job of using that skill on her now.

“Stop it,” she said when she couldn’t take it any longer.

“Stop what?”

“Staring at me.”

“Make me.”

She turned her head and locked eyes with him. She couldn’t read him worth a damn. She’d wasted two years trying to get in his head before she realized she would never understand him. How could she when he categorized everything in terms of profit and loss? She wasn’t capable of being as brutally calculating as he was. Memories of that night in London seeped into her mind, and she looked away.

“Tell me about Thalia Crane.”

Her head whipped around so fast, she felt a streak of pain in her neck. She couldn’t have heard right… but his calm, expectant expression said she wasn’t having a nightmare. He knew. Oh. My. God. Her need to flee was so strong, her eyes moved to the door.

“You won’t get far,” he said quietly.

Chapter 3

She covered her face with her hands and moaned. No, this couldn’t be happening. She rocked back and forth as if she were locked in fervent prayer—and she was. If God made her vanish in a puff of smoke or just struck her dead, she would be eternally grateful. Anything to save her from this.

“You hit it big writing about our affair, the scandal, being disowned, about our sex life—”

She dropped her hands to declare, “It’slooselybased on us.”

“The virgin scene is position by position our first time.”

She wrapped her hands around her throat because she could feel it closing. “Y-youread…?”

He tapped his fingers on the back of the couch as his mouth curved into a mocking smile. “All four.”

Bile rose. “Some of the scenes are us but…”

“That scene in the alley was us. That’s when we discovered you have a thing for doing it in public—”

“Roth!” She was torn between pummeling him to make him shut up or locking herself in Kaia’s room and freezing to death. She didn’t like either option. Her head felt as if it was going to explode. “If you read the books, you know that Rex, the guy whorepresentsyou, has been in and out of the series so,” she said with heavy emphasis, leaning toward him to make her point, “it. Isn’t. Us.Obviously.”

“I think they may get back together in book five.”

“They don’t,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Have you finished it?”

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